Workers’ Compensation Audits
We partnered with benchmark commercial insurance to discuss how audits relate to workers’ compensation. Benchmark offers a boutique approach to serving their clients through providing and maintaining commercial and personal insurance policies. Their goal is to establish comprehensive risk management and accident-avoidance programs to help prevent claims from arising. Get to know benchmark here.
Watch our full video on how audits and workers’ compensation relate to one other in our video below.
How do Audits Relate to Workers’ Compensation?
Under a workers’ compensation policy, a policyholder is required to verify with the workers’ compensation carrier the actual wages that were paid to W-2 employees. In cases of hiring 1099 independent contractors, if they do not have workers’ compensation, the policyholder must verify the policy term.
Most often, the audits triggered by workers’ compensation issues are referred to as wage verification protocol. The most important thing to remember about wage verification protocol when it comes to a workers’ compensation carrier, is making sure that you are providing the list of employees, by wage category, including their wages and their job description. In the provided list, make sure that each job description matches the code description in which you have them classified.
During the process, your attorney should be reviewing the schedule with you before submitting the verification to the agent (auditor). Reviewing the schedule helps avoid having to reclassify wages in a higher-rated code post wage verification protocol.
What is the wage verification protocol?
When the Employment Development Department (EDD) notifies business owners of the verification protocol, they send a letter in the mail. When business owners partner with our Milikowsky Tax Law team, we research the hired independent contractors that meet the criteria to be correctly classified as 1099 workers. In this process, we find:
- Business reports
- Background reports
- Verify EAM and DBA
- Business license
- EIN number
- Social media accounts
- Website, if they have one (sometimes freelancers use Fiverr or Yelp pages instead)
Sometimes, during the verification process, EDD will notify business owners that workers were misclassified as independent contractors and should actually be classified as full-time W-2 employees. All of the information we gather on each individual worker helps build a case with EDD that the hired 1099 independent contractor is properly classified as such.
The writeup we create for each worker is included in our initial response to EDD. When the auditor receives it, they don’t have to pursue the same research we already completed. While they will still need to verify our findings, the auditor will not have to develop their own theory about classification because we’ve already given them the story and the answer. This process is easier for the auditor to see versus when they are given information without a story behind it.
There are tips and tricks to help business owners avoid feeling blindsided through the audit process either by EDD, CSLB, or by their workers’ compensation carrier. We’re here to help before business owners ever get to that process. Learn more about What to Expect in an EDD Audit here.
