There are laws and regulations that determine a claimant's eligibility. If you have been charged on your benefit charge statement, then that determination has already been made as far as the claimant's eligibility. Therefore, the real issue for you, the employer, is that you do not want to be the one to pay for the cost of the benefits collected.
Not necessarily. If it is determined that your company is to receive a non-charge, your percentage (dollar amount) will be charged to a generic kitty (officially called a Social Charge account) instead of being charged to your account; therefore, you will not have to pay.
A base period is made up of four quarters or one full year of wages paid by every employer in that year. Let us imagine that we are establishing a base period today.
First, consider that you are in a wage reporting quarter right now. You
obviously have not reported your wages for this quarter, so the wages
cannot be part of the base period.
Second, the wage report that you submitted for the last quarter may not
be processed and in the system yet, so that quarter is not considered
as part of the base period either. Therefore, the base period begins with
the quarter before that and continues backward for four quarters or one
year.
Example:
2002-2 = current quarter = does not count
2002-1 = quarter last reported by you = does not count
2001-4 = in base period
2001-3 = in base period
2001-2 = in base period
2001-1 = in base period
The day a claim is filed, a base period is established and remains in
effect until one year passes and the claim period expires. If a new claim
is filed, previously used quarters drop off and new quarters are added
(but they still equal four quarters or one full year). Your company remains
in the base period as long as there were wages reported for any of the
quarters considered.
Because when the claimant filed a new claim, it was possible that the two quarters that were not used in the base period the first time may now be part of the new base period. Look at the example in #3. The 2002-1 and 2002-2 quarters may become part of the base period established when a claimant files in 2003. Because the new base period does not expire for a full year, which may be in 2004, you can see how a claimant could be collecting benefits long after having worked for you.
If you paid wages and were an employer within the established base period (see #2), you may be responsible for your percentage (your share) of the total wages earned during the base period (one year).
The claimant made more money while working for you. The percentage is calculated by taking the total wages made in the base period (a year) and determining what portion was paid by your company.
A new claim period has been established for the claimant. When that happened, the non-charge stayed with the prior (old) claim period and did not transfer to the new claim period. Submit a Benefit Charge Protest (PDF) so the charges can be examined or adjusted.
Remember, if the claimant returned to work for your company and separated again, a determination on the latest separation in the base period may not have been a non-charge. Therefore, the charge may be an accurate charge. If you submit a Benefit Charge Protest, we will review this for you.
An analyst will review your records and the charge in question. Manual adjustments will be made, if required. Your company will receive notification of what was determined during the review and what adjustments were performed. We recommend that you keep this correspondence with your benefit charge statement for future reference.
Remember, the benefit charge statements are sent to employers throughout the state all at the same time. Although a very small percentage of employers dispute their charges, the disputes that are made tend to come into us at the same time. Therefore, it can take a couple of weeks before your protest is reviewed, so we ask for your patience.
This page was last updated on March 28, 2007.