What You Should Know before hiring a Contractor

Did you know that any contractor performing $500 worth of work or more (including materials and labor) must be licensed by the Contractors State Licence Board to work in California?

Find out more info from the CSLB, here:

http://www.cslb.ca.gov/Resources/GuidesAndPamphlets/WYSKPamphlet.pdf

http://www.cslb.ca.gov/Consumers/

Check out our article in the recent Pacific Sun Magazine!

Maximum HSA contribution to rise slightly in 2012

Interesting recent article from Business Insurance.com:

http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20110516/NEWS/110519957

The Affordable Care Act and Impact on California Tax

Here is some good news!

The Affordable Care Act and Impact on California Tax – AB 36

Effective 4/7/11 for Tax Year 2010

Health Coverage for Adult Children up to Age 27

California Assembly Bill (AB) 36 was enacted on April 7, 2011. This bill conforms California personal income tax law with federal income tax law by adopting a specified provision of the Affordable Care Act signed into law by the President in March 2010. (The Affordable Care Act refers to Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.) AB 36 is effective immediately, and generally applies to the same taxable periods as federal law.

·         The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires benefit plans that provide coverage for family members to cover adult children of the employee, to age 26 whether or not they qualify as dependents for tax purposes.

·         The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 extends the general exclusion for reimbursements for medical care expenses under an employer-provided accident or health plan to any child of an employee who has not attained age 27 as of the end of the taxable year.

Impact on Income Tax – The Affordable Care Act amends federal income tax laws to exclude the value of an eligible adult child’s medical coverage from the taxable income of the parent-employee, even if the child is not a dependent. The law also allows self-employed individuals a deduction for health insurance premiums for an adult child under age 27, even if the child is not a dependent.

New California law – California personal income tax law, as amended by AB 36, conforms to the 2010 federal income tax rules which exclude the value of the medical coverage provided to nondependent adult children from California gross income and allow a deduction to self-employed individuals for health insurance premiums for nondependent adult children under age 27.

·         Any amount paid by an employee for such additional coverage is excluded from California taxable wages.

·         Self-employed individuals may deduct the health insurance premium paid for an adult child under age 27.

Find out more at www.ftb.ca.gov

Who pays for Long Term Care?

Long Term Care is not covered by traditional medical insurance plans. Meaning, you are responsible for paying for Long Term Care that major medical insurance plans will not cover.  Medicare may assist in nursing home care and skilled nursing, but only for a very limited time and MediCal pays for nursing home care only when you are impoverished. We can help you find the right Long Term Care product that fits your needs.

New Law: Serious Violations To Impact Employers & Brokers

The most important piece of occupational safety and health legislation in the past decade - AB 2774 - and one of the most important since Cal/OSHA came into existence, is now law. Now, when the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) comes into a workplace to investigate a possible serious violation, (no injury necessary) it has a clear series of steps to establish such a serious violation. And if those steps are properly followed, major fines - like $25,000, imposed on employers are far more than likely to stick - and to stick without reduction.

It isn't much of a hurdle for DOSH to surmount. In fact, the law, AB 2774, essentially was written by DOSH to make it easier for serious violations to survive an appeal. After Fed-OSHA chided Cal/OSHA for what it sees as too few violations classified as serious, and for reductions in fines, some observers criticized the old law as sparing DOSH the work of having to prove its allegations at hearing. But no more.

Get ready for the World Series of serious violations, experts warn.

Starting now, if an employer has an injury in its workplace or even allegations of a serious hazard, both DOSH and the Appeals Board have clearer rules to make their case. Those rules are designed to make it easier to establish that a violation was serious in the appeals process. And those rules also provide for defenses to those violations - a proper - Injury & Illness Prevention Plan or IIPP as they are commonly known.

No longer will those cheap and canned IIPPs be acceptable. An incomplete or amateur IIPP can generate as much as a $5000 fine for an employer. And employers are starting to realize they can come back against brokers' E&O for the fine and legal expenses if the broker provides it and a ticket in generated.

But there is something in the new law for employers, too. An employer will have the opportunity to avoid the hated black mark on its safety record, providing it can show it did all it could to prevent serious hazards. That's because the law gives employers the opportunity to talk DOSH out of issuing a serious citation, providing the proper processes are followed. One of those is a credible unique for the employer IIPP. But there are many other requirements.

"I don't think the sky is falling, by any means," says Southern California defense expert Kevin Bland, Esq. He defends employers in Cal/OSHA cases and represents trade associations in safety appeals. "But you should be alarmed if you only have a paper safety program that doesn't have any teeth."

AB 2774 was born out of DOSH frustrations about the high bar the Cal/OSH Appeals Board has set to establish a serious violation. That bar is now lower. But DOSH Chief Len Welsh says the overall aim of the law is to foster communication between the division and employers to abate and prevent serious hazards. "Those who are paying attention will be rewarded," he says, but "those who are not may find themselves in trouble."

In other words, the most important thing an employer can do is to provide the proper safety environment and understand its rights and responsibilities.

The core principle of the new law is that a hazard posing a risk of serious physical harm that is unacceptable by modern standards should be treated as a serious violation and penalized accordingly, Welsh says. Under previous rules, the division had the extremely difficult burden of showing that the hazard was 51% likely to cause serious injury or death. But no more...

"One way to look at it is it's a complete reboot on how to approach serious violations in California," Welsh explains. "From my point of view, it's a clean slate. Instead of having that impossible formula the Appeals Board was forcing on us, we now have an approach that at least conceptually comports to a modern concept of how to approach hazards."

"It's an extremely important change in the law," agrees DOSH Chief Counsel Amy Martin. "It changes a fundamental definition in classifications. It's certainly the largest change in the eight years I've been here."

Embedded in AB 2774 is the concept that employers are not omnipotent or omniscient, and incidents sometimes occur that aren't an employer's fault.

It establishes the factors Cal/OSHA inspectors must consider before issuing a serious violation, which is defined as "a realistic possibility that death or serious physical harm could result from the actual hazard created by the violation." Inspectors must consider the employer's training and safety communication programs, procedures for discovering and dealing with hazards, how it supervises exposed employees, the circumstances surrounding the incident and why the employer does not believe a serious violation exists.

If DOSH decides to issue the serious citation in spite of this information, the employer can rebut the allegation by demonstrating that it took all of the steps a "reasonable and responsible" employer in similar circumstances would be expected to take.

For Welsh, the "dialogue" that inspectors and employers must now have is the most important part of the new process. "For those in the employer community who are not paying attention, they may be losing tremendous opportunities to work with DOSH even in an enforcement setting to make sure they get a proper result." Smart employers, he adds, will pay attention to DOSH's inspection "work product" as it develops and challenge the division when they think a conclusion is incorrect. "Those who are in a position of strength, having done their homework and paid attention to the inspection, and knowing their operation better than DOSH, can bring facts to our attention that we may have missed," Welsh explains.

Once a serious violation is issued, it is a permanent black mark on an employer's safety record, regardless of the outcome of the case. "It's in IMIS [the federal Integrated Management Information Service] forever and it can't be removed," he says. "Employers don't like that and I don't blame them. What this does is give employers an opportunity to dialogue with Cal/OSHA and challenge what we think we found in terms of serious violations, and persuade us that perhaps we're not correct."

Bland agrees that the law provides employers who pay attention to safety with another tool in defending against serious citations. "By applying the 'realistic probability' standard, we as employers get to assert an affirmative defense," he explains. An employer can argue that because of its safety and training programs, it would be highly unusual that an incident would occur as the result of a violation. Or if there were an incident that led to an investigation, the employer could assert that it was an isolated incident because the firm's safety program is robust.

"There's a chance for everybody here," Welsh observes. "Most people think of an inspection as a poker game, where you hold your cards close to the vest. The message this bill is trying to get out is that poker is not the game to play when it comes to a Cal/OSHA investigation. The game to play is communication and forthright discussion of safety issues. That's all we're trying to do - make the workplace safer."

Martin, the DOSH official in charge of prosecuting enforcement actions through the system, can't predict whether AB 2774 will lead to the division issuing a higher number of serious violations, but he says that if all parties follow the intent of the new law, the serious violations that are issued "should be more accurate and fair, because of the discussion that goes on."

Carriers and brokers, for their part, if they are involved in safety have to do a more professional job. If they are advising on safety issues or providing safety materials they have to provide materials and advice that are up to standards.

There will be a video webinar on the new law January 26^th from 10 to 11:30 put on by Cal-OSHA Reporter. The cost is $139 per site. One hour of CE credit is pending from CDI, State Bar Credit is available. More information will be coming next week or click here to register: http://www.provpubs.tv/AccountManager/RegEv.aspx?PIID=E952DE89814F

NEW HEALTH CARE OPTIONS FOR UNINSURED CHILDREN (from the California Department of Insurance)

http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0100-consumers/0020-health-related/CAOpenEnrollment.cfm