Blog - 2017
Legal & Regulatory Updates
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017: What Taxpayers Need to Know
12/29/2017
On December 22, 2017, the President signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the act or TCJA). The legislation makes significant changes to the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), including individual, corporate, and gift and estate taxation. Read more...
Human Resources & Payroll
IRS Statement: Withholding for 2018
12/29/2017
On December 26, the IRS announced they are still working to develop withholding guidance to implement the new tax reform law, which was signed on December 22. Read more...
Employee Benefits & Insurance
IRS Announces ACA Reporting Extension
12/29/2017
The IRS has extended the deadline for providing 1095 forms to employees from January 31 to March 2, 2018. Read more...
Legal & Regulatory Updates
Trump's Executive Order on Healthcare
10/13/2017
Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order (EO), which he said will “promote healthcare and competition.” The EO is intended to make lower premiums and greater access more widely available. Read more...
Best Practices
Planning for Disasters
10/7/2017
Disasters can be life-changing and stressful; however, avoiding the topic doesn’t eliminate the stress or the possibility of a disaster occurring. Whether a medical emergency or severe weather—like we’ve just witnessed across the southern United States—we know that some disasters are unavoidable. The best defense in these situations is having compliant policies in place and ensuring your staff is well-trained on them. Read more...
Trucking
TXTA Conference Recap: Workplace Financial Wellness
9/8/2017
Does it ever feel like you're hiring an employee's family when you hire the employee? Like you're getting their positive attributes but sometimes along with their stress? The fact is that you are. When you hire an employee, you get everything that comes along with them. In general, people are stressed, and so that means our employees are stressed regardless of how professionally they act when we see them on the job. The reality is that there's a cost to ignoring this challenge. Then what's the alternative? Employers have the option to provide a very significant opportunity for employees to address their financial lives. Workplace Financial Wellness is a growing type of benefit that is specifically designed to help employees learn to manage their financial lives and thus reduce their stress and anxiety. Read more...
Trucking
TXTA Conference Recap: How Texas Trucking Companies are Designing 401(k) Plans to Maximize Participation
9/1/2017
A company retirement plan is designed to be part of the overall compensation strategy. We can view weekly pay as current pay and retirement contributions as future pay. Offering a retirement plan is probably the greatest opportunity to help employees with preparing for the future. Employers do have a number of available options to encourage participation in their retirement plan. For today, we will focus on the most common type of retirement plan, a 401(k) plan. Read more...
Trucking
TXTA Conference Recap: Insured Options: High Deductible Health Plans
8/30/2017
Where is health care headed? That would be anyone's guess at this point. What we know is that efforts to modify the Affordable Care Act (ACA) so far have failed. It is a massive law, and there has been no consensus on an overall fix. Currently, there is some work under way to try to fix certain provisions both sides can agree on, but we're likely going to have the results of the ACA with us for a long time to come. Read more...
Trucking
TXTA Conference Recap: Compensation Strategy & Planning
8/25/2017
Managing compensation is part of the overall management of a strong corporate culture. What we know is you cannot win on pay alone, and you cannot win without it. We frequently hear from business owners that employees leave to work where the pay rate is perceived as higher and that there is not an appreciation or understanding of all the other things being done as part of their compensation package. Read more...
Trucking
TXTA Conference Recap: Employee Stress & Financial Health
8/23/2017
Your employees are stressed, very likely due to concerns about their financial health. A study by the American Psychological Association found that money is a top source of stress for Americans: "Nearly three-quarters (72%) of adults report feeling stressed about money at least some of the time and nearly one-quarter say that they experience extreme stress about money (22% rate their stress about money during the past month as an 8, 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale)." Read more...
Compliance
Revised Form I-9 Published July 17, 2017
7/21/2017
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released a revised version of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, on July 17, 2017. The revision date can be found in the lower left corner of the form. Read more...
BFG Staff
Announcing Mrs. Amanda Larson
5/15/2017
We are pleased to announce that on April 8, 2017, one of our consultants, Amanda Ashley, was married to Ryan Larson. Read more...
Best Practices
W-2 Phishing Scam
2/17/2017
The IRS has released an alert on phishing scams intended to steal employee W-2 information. In particular, the IRS reports not only that this W-2 phishing scam has targeted schools, restaurants, hospitals, and tribal groups, but that it is also evolving to target other industries. Read more...