labor lawAdivision of labor law center

Back to the positive now—what happens when you are just starting up your business in the state of Ohio. No more of this depressing talk on closing your business for now. Now, the sky is the limit for your company, and you and your employees will work hard together toward a better future for your company and every individual involved in it.

Part of this better future, though, is making contingency preparations for if and when times do get tough. Optimism doesn’t mean you can’t be a little realistic too. And that means you understand that there will be times when you might have to lay off a few employees. And if you don’t want to consider that possibility, no worries—the state of Ohio will help you, through unemployment insurance.

In Ohio, most every employer has to participate in the unemployment insurance system. That involves, as it does in past states we have looked at, paying unemployment insurance taxes for each and every one of your employees. To do so accurately, it involves also reporting on your employees’ earnings every quarter.

Of course, participating in the Ohio unemployment insurance system also involves placing an unemployment insurance poster up in your work places, all of them. This may sound like a simple step, and it is. You must simply get at least one poster for every work site in your organization, and put up the posters in the facilities in a location that is convenient, accessible, and heavily traveled so that all of your employees can see the unemployment insurance poster.

Seems simple, but it can go a long way to educating your employees about their rights under the unemployment insurance system, and how they are deserved of benefits should they lose their job of no fault of their own. This education can go a long way in helping your employees understand this system should, heaven forbid, they end up losing their job down the road.

Information supplied by employers on quarterly reports is used to determine annual rates. These annual rates determine claimant benefits described on Ohio Unemployment Insurance posters. Employers who have not furnished wage information necessary for computation of their experience rate by September 1 of each year will be assigned a Delinquency Rate equal to 125% of the maximum experience rate possible for the coming year.

Wage reports provide the basis for possible benefit claim awards. Inaccurate and untimely reports will create additional reporting for the employer, delays in benefit payments and increased costs associated with report and benefit processing.

Even though the quarterly Report of Wages and the quarterly Contribution Report are printed and mailed as one document, Ohio law defined them as two separate reports until January 1, 2002. Therefore, if both reports were submitted late, two penalties (forfeitures) were assessed, one for each report.

Beginning with the first calendar quarter of 2002, a single penalty (forfeiture) will be assessed for not filing a complete quarterly Contribution and Wage Report when due. The forfeiture will amount to twenty-five one-hundredths of one percent (.25 percent) of the total wages reported. The minimum penalty for failure to file a quarterly report when due is $50 and the maximum is $1000.

In addition to filing on time, it is also the responsibility of the employer to educate his employees on the subject of UI. The best way to do this is to display Ohio Unemployment Insurance posters.

Employers are urged to file the quarterly reports when due, even if the taxes cannot be paid. Although the unpaid taxes will accrue interest, the forfeitures can be avoided when reports are filed timely. Interest will accrue on the unpaid taxes as well as any unpaid forfeitures at the annual rate of 14%, compounded monthly.

Under certain circumstances a waiver of forfeiture may be granted for the untimely filing of the quarterly report if a written request is submitted within four years of when the forfeiture was assessed. Interest may also be waived if the employer submits a written request for waiver and meets other statutory requirements within 30 days of the interest assessment.

I’m particularly interested in unemployment law, basically, how much a government will protect its citizens in the event that they should undergo a change in occupation. Recently I came across some information pertaining to unemployment law in Ohio. Ohio residents, as do residents of any state, must meet a certain set of criteria in order to collect unemployment insurance. Among those criteria are the following:

1. The worker has to have first been employed. Not only do they have to be employed, but there are particular circumstances under which the worker has had to be employed. For example, the worker has to have earned hours and time through what’s called a “base period” to ensure that he or she truly did make an effort to find employment.
2. The worker has to establish that the cause for unemployment was through no fault of his or her own as the law defines “fault.”
3. The worker must continually file claims and respond to state requests for updates. The worker must also report any amount of earnings and must also report any job offers or job offers that were then turned down.
4. There are other requirements that could be listed under the Ohio law that must also be met.

Of course, the particulars of unemployment law vary from state to state in terms of how much compensation a worker will get and how many jobs they need to apply to in each week. For some laws, they need to apply to at least two jobs a week while for others, they need to apply to more.

Unemployed workers need to have a very solid reason for denying any work that they are offered as well. The amount of money that the unemployed person can collect varies entirely by the cost of living of each state, therefore, in higher cost states, the unemployment amount will be greater than in lower cost states, such as Ohio.

The Ohio State Only Labor Law poster reflects all of the most current labor laws pertaining to unemployment insurance. The Ohio Complete Labor Law poster not only provides the most up to date Ohio labor laws but it also includes the federal labor laws as well.