Hello Judi,
Probably the need would be to setup two earnings types for sick leave. One would be paid at the regular rate and would be used if the employee was sick with Covid-19. The other would be used if a family member is sick and would be paid at 67% of regular pay. They have to track these separately because if they pay these out, they can get reimbursed for the Covid-19 related sick pay by the government.
There is apparently a limit to how much of that special Covid-19 sick leave the employer is required to pay though. I browsed through that GP document you linked to, and they are just suggesting that the employer track the amount manually. As an example, if the employer can be reimbursed for 80 hours of sick leave for an employee who is sick with Covid-19, the employer can enter timesheets for that sick time, and when they have entered 80 hours, then they would know they can’t enter more hours for that specific sick leave. They actually could but-- they wouldn’t be reimbursed for it.
There is also an idea to setup a "benefit" for the sick leave. The only advantage we see to doing that is when they are entering time and there is no more of the benefit available, they will get a warning message. It won’t stop them from entering time, but as an example, if they setup a benefit for 80 hours of this sick leave and the entire 80 hours was used, and then they entered more time, they would get a warning that the employee doesn’t have enough benefit hours to cover the time entered. That was apparently important to some sites, to have the system track the remaining hours and deliver a warning. I’m not sure we would necessarily recommend that for all sites that ask about this, but it could be an option.
HOWEVER, The only problem with this would be the earnings type needed to setup at a pay rate of .67%. When you setup an earnings as a "benefit usage", the rate multiplier cannot be changed. This is by design. So that pretty much says...setup an earnings type for this issue and track it manually on a spreadsheet.
I don't really have any comment on the reporting part, the IRS hasn't released any guidelines regarding reporting.
Best Regards,
Jana MacDonald
