Beginning next year, EPCC employees, contracted or non-contracted, must elect in writing if they choose to have their salary evenly distributed over a 12-month period rather than receive their salary over the nine months of the year in which they work.
This is a sudden change from past years in which employees needed only to fill out the salary payment option form once.
“It’s not practical,” said speech instructor Patricia Islas.
“If we do it one time then that should be enough instead of every single year.”
Some EPCC employees find this regulation tedious because many will be electing the same choice every year, again and again.
“Trying to keep up with these regulations is a difficult task,” said director of personnel services Elizabeth Olguin-Ryan. “This regulation is 397 pages long. It will create a lot of paperwork for personnel.”
Just before the start of the fall semester, the IRS had given school employees the deadline of Aug. 10 to submit their decision and EPCC employees received an e-mail and letter from the personnel services department only eight days before.
School employees were told that failure to do so would result in an additional 20 percent excise tax for those electing to have their compensation annualized, or spread out over 12 months, after the deadline had passed.
“When it happened, a group of instructors and I were in Mexico,” said Islas. “So not only did they announce it late and during summer break but several of us were out of town.”
But the personnel services department was only made aware through a faculty member who had been told by his wife, an employee of the public school system.
“Gene Muller came to us and asked us if EPCC employees were subject to this regulation so we did the research and found out we were,” said Olguin-Ryan.
Then, on Aug. 7, the IRS issued a guidance letter stating that teachers and other school employees will not be subject to a tax penalty this 2007-08 school year, but will be applied to the 2008-09 school year.
The personnel services department sent an e-mail updating faculty on the change, but told faculty that salary payment option forms were still being collected, except without penalty from the IRS for late filing and the new deadline was Aug. 30.
“By the time they extended the date, we had already submitted the form and endured the stress,” said Islas
With the pressure now off, the personnel services department is glad to have let all faculty know a year in advance rather than eight days.
“We don’t have advisors to tell us when these changes are happening, we have to keep on top of it,” said Olguin-Ryan.
“We ask faculty to please read and keep up with this because by no means are we experts in treasury law.”
