Speaker: Patrick Haggerty
Speaker Designation: Owner, Tax and Consulting Services
Employers face special challenges when calculating overtime for non-exempt employees, whether paid on an hourly, piecework, or salaried basis. Payroll professionals must take into consideration commissions, bonuses, and other special wage payments, piece rates, shift differentials, multiple pay rates, and actual hours worked during a workweek when making their calculations.
Calculating overtime is not necessarily as simple as taking computing one- and one-half times the employee’s hourly rate. Issues include the determination of which employees are eligible for overtime, calculation of the regular rate of pay for overtime-eligible salaried employees, and proper handling of bonus, incentive, and shift-differential payments.
There is a lot more to overtime calculation than initially meets the eye. Mistakes, even honest ones, can be costly. State and federal labor departments regularly issue fines and back pay awards where employers have failed to properly compensate employees for overtime. It is important that payroll professionals know and properly apply the overtime rules.
Pat Haggerty is a tax practitioner, author, and educator. His work experience includes non-profit organization management, banking, manufacturing accounting, and tax practice. He began teaching accounting at the college level in 1988. He is licensed as an Enrolled Agent by the U. S. Treasury to represent taxpayers at all administrative levels of the IRS and is a Certified Management Accountant. He has written numerous articles and a monthly question and answer column for payroll publications. In addition, he regularly develops and presents webinars and presentations on a variety of topics including Payroll tax issues, FLSA compliance, information returns, and accounting.
