Canadian Payroll Association Seminar Focuses on Completing the Record of Employment and Administering Special Payments
TORONTO, May 26, 2017 /CNW/ - The Record of Employment (ROE) is a mandatory form required by the Federal government after an employee experiences an interruption of earnings of seven days or more. An interruption of earnings may happen for a variety of reasons including planned or un-planned absences like termination, sickness and maternity and/or parental leave, which may also require the administration of special payments by employers. Failure to submit an ROE within the legislated timeframe means that employers may be fined for non-compliance and face an increased risk of audit. To complicate matters, administering the ROE remains a top challenge for payroll, accounting and HR practitioners, according to Canadian Payroll Association (CPA) survey results. The ROE is a complex form with a 52-page user guide and practitioners must navigate this complexity to ensure that they are remaining compliant.
An employer's ability to plan for special payments and ensure they are administered in accordance with organizational policies and compliant with government legislation depends on the knowledge of their payroll, HR and accounting staff.
Thankfully, the CPA's Special Payments and Completing the ROE Professional Development seminar, offered across Canada throughout the year, provides the knowledge to understand what special payments are and when they apply, offers a thorough block-by-block walkthrough of the ROE, and supplies an ROE Checklist to enable employers to confidently and correctly administer the form.
ROE Remains Challenging Despite Improvements
In just the past year, there were important changes to the ROE (ROE Web, for example). Many of these changes were successfully advocated for by the CPA in an effort to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ROE administration. "In light of the Government's decision to change the Employment Insurance (EI) waiting period to one week, the CPA successfully advocated that employers not have to file ROEs earlier, to retain the accuracy and speed of data transfer to Service Canada for EI claims," explains Rachel De Grâce, the CPA's Manager of Advocacy and Legislative Content.
The CPA also made several recommendations to Service Canada to improve ROE Web for employers, which were adopted last year.
Special Payments Create Payroll Complexity
Anyone who is responsible for payroll knows that compliance is crucial, especially given the constantly-changing legislation and regulations that affect the profession. Practitioners who administer payroll are largely responsible for processing employee payments that fall outside the regular payroll cycle. Payroll becomes increasingly complex when considering special payments, which cover a host of payment exceptions including employee bonuses, severance pay, workers' compensation top-ups, and death and retirement benefits, to name a few.
"Employers must consider how special payments are affected by federal and provincial legislation, organization policies and procedures, as well as employee behavior and circumstances," says Janet Spence, Manager of Compliance Services and Programs at the CPA. "By encouraging payroll, accounting and HR professionals to undertake ongoing professional development, employers can be assured that their staff will have the tools and resources needed to confidently handle special payments and properly administer the ROE on behalf of employees."
The CPA's Special Payments & Completing the ROE Professional Development seminar is one of more than 20 different topics covered by the Association's Professional Development Seminars. These seminars, available across Canada for members and non-members in payroll, accounting and human resources, provide vital knowledge to support payroll compliance. For a complete listing of seminar dates and for more information on the Canadian Payroll Association's Professional Development Seminars, Certification Programs and Benefits of Membership, visit payroll.ca / paie.ca.
About the Canadian Payroll Association:
Canada's 1.5 million employers rely on payroll practitioners to ensure the timely and accurate annual payment of $928 billion in wages and taxable benefits, $313 billion in statutory remittances to the federal and provincial governments, and $177 billion in health and retirement benefits, while complying with more than 200 federal and provincial regulatory requirements. Since 1978, the Canadian Payroll Association has annually influenced the payroll compliance practices and processes of over 500,000 organizational payrolls. As the authoritative source of Canadian payroll compliance knowledge, the Canadian Payroll Association promotes payroll compliance through education and advocacy.
SOURCE Canadian Payroll Association
Alison Rutka, Communications Specialist, [email protected], 416-487-3380 x 125
Share this article