Free money isn’t free (Maskachusetts unemployment insurance rates going up for employers)

Suppose that you can convince an American worker to get off the couch, stop cashing checks from Joe Biden, and don a mask for the CDC-required 8 hours per day? If you’re an employer in Maskachusetts, in addition to paying higher wages you’ll be paying a higher percentage of those wages in unemployment insurance premium.

Email from the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance, July 15, 2021:

Dear Massachusetts Employer,

… As part of the Commonwealth’s plan to manageably spread over time the cost of benefits paid by the UI Trust Fund in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 crisis, experience-rated employers will be charged a quarterly COVID-19 Recovery Assessment. The 2021 COVID-19 Recovery Assessment Rate Schedule on page 6 shows the assigned COVID-19 Recovery Assessment rate for each UI rate, equal to 10.50% of an employer’s corresponding UI rate. The COVID-19 Recovery Assessment will be retroactive to January 1, 2021. …

Thank you,

DUA Rate Setting Team

Another great reason to use contractors rather than employees whenever possible!

2 thoughts on “Free money isn’t free (Maskachusetts unemployment insurance rates going up for employers)

  1. Hiring contractors won’t help because I suspect thr same tax raise applies to self-employed as well.

    Classical communism: fools who work pay for the welfare of bums. Eventually the fools wise up and stop working too. And then the way people are inducef to work becomes punitive: those who slack are sent to jails.

  2. In Calif*, unemployment insurance is charged to the employee, hence why all gootubers are self employed democrats instead of W-2 filing democrats. Guess they’d all be employees in Greenspunchusetts.

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