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FAMLI Newsletter
March 28, 2023
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 Welcome to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE)'s March 2023 newsletter for Colorado’s new paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) program. You’re receiving this newsletter because it includes important FAMLI updates that will impact your business in some way. Remember you can customize your newsletter settings by subscribing to specific topics, and you can also get these updates sent directly to your cell phone, just add your mobile number to your subscription preferences, and select SMS/text message.
The first deadline for wage reports and premium payments is right around the corner, so register your business in My FAMLI+ Employer today! Whether you are a small business with a staff of five or fifty, every business with at least one qualified employee must register. We have several resources available, including new how-to videos and quick reference guides, to make the registration process as seamless as possible.
Premium payments are due quarterly. The first payment to FAMLI is due April 30, 2023. FAMLI is offering a 30-day grace period before payments will be considered late. This grace period is currently reflected on your dashboard in My FAMLI+ Employer, which shows May 31, 2023 as the first deadline.
Tools to Help You Prepare Your Wage Reports
With the first deadline to submit your wage reports fast approaching, now’s the time to get your wage reports ready. Any business with at least one qualified employee is required to submit wage data for the employee to the Division once a quarter. This will determine the employer’s total premium payment for the quarter. This can be done using our online employer services portal, My FAMLI+ Employer or by using API technology. Please refer to our Wage Reporting API Specifications for API instructions. Within My FAMLI+ Employer, employers have options to submit their wage data including:
These sample templates can also be found on our resources page for TPAs in addition to the Employers page under the Submitting Your Wage Reports section.
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We have new How-to-Videos up on our website and the CDLE YouTube channel. These step-by-step videos provide support for each user type accessing My FAMLI+ Employer. Set yourself up for success today! Watch the new how-to videos, and if you’d prefer additional live support, we’ve got that covered too. Just give us a call Monday - Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1-866-CO-FAMLI (1-866-263-2654).
Your feedback about your experience is important to us. Please complete this survey after using My FAMLI+ Employer to help us improve our customer experience. Your comments will be considered as we look to continuously improve the online experience for employers, third party administrators and local government employers.
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The FAMLI Act states that payroll deductions cannot be made retroactively (7 CCR 1107-1.5.3 B.1.(a)). If an employer failed to deduct the employee share of the premium from wages paid during any pay period after January 1, 2023, the employer will be considered to have elected to pay that portion of the employees' share. Employers cannot deduct missed premiums from future paychecks for a previous pay period.
FAMLI affects Colorado local government employers differently than private businesses. The statute was written to give local governments options to participate. Local Governments have until March 31, 2023 to conduct their vote to opt out of FAMLI. After completing the vote, local government employers must register and upload a letter documenting the outcome and the date the vote was held in My FAMLI+ Employer before the first premiums are due in order to avoid paying premiums for Q1 of 2023. If a local government employer votes to opt out between April 1 and June 30, 2023, they will be expected to submit Q1 wage data and pay corresponding premiums for the quarter. Watch the How To Opt Out video and review the Local Government user guide for step-by-step instructions to opt out.
We’ve received a lot of questions from employers who work with Third Party Administrators, or TPAs. We encourage employers to connect with their TPA to be sure what and how the TPA will be supporting them with FAMLI. Each TPA may operate a little differently. Here are some important things to note:
- TPAs may register on behalf of their employer clients, but this is not required. TPAs will need to register their TPA account before registering multiple clients.
- Employers also have the option to register their business manually in My FAMLI+ Employer.
- If an employer registers their business in My FAMLI+ Employer before their TPA does it for them, TPAs can link to that employer account by uploading a bulk registration file with that employer’s information included in the file. For more guidance on the bulk registration process, please see the User Guide for TPAs for more details.
- If an employer wants access to their account after a TPA has bulk registered them, the TPA will need to add them as a user. Check out our quick reference guide for TPAs for more details on how to give account access to your clients.
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Update for TPAs: Starting on Friday, March 31, the bulk registration file will require that you include an email address for each business that you are registering. If your file does not include an email address to identify a business contact for each employer you are registering, you will receive an error after attempting to upload your file. We will be updating the File Specifications for bulk registration accordingly on Friday, March 31. This update will ensure each business is notified that their TPA has registered on their behalf and allows businesses to self-serve and gain access to their My FAMLI+ Employer accounts from that email address, without needing support from the TPA.
- We will be adding additional ways for employers and TPAs to link their accounts in the system in the near future. Stay tuned for upgrades!
Wages subject to FAMLI premiums are more complicated than they seem. Here’s what you need to know about wages: The FAMLI program is focusing only on wages that are typically received during employment. This means that post-employment payments that are not considered wages include severance payments, deferred compensation disbursements and pension disbursements. We breakdown the concept of wages even further in this blog post.
As we approach the first premium deadline, it is important to be informed about your deductions. There are certain situations where you might not be seeing the deductions on your paychecks. We recommend you ask your employer about the deductions and confirm how they plan to provide the required paid family leave benefit starting in 2024. Here are a few scenarios where you might not see a deduction:
- Your employer may be paying your share of the premium,
- You may work for a local government that opted out,
- Your employer may be planning to fulfill their FAMLI requirements by applying for private plan approval,
- Your employer may be just catching up to their FAMLI obligations, or,
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You may work for the federal government or a railroad.
Check out our recent blog post on this topic on our website.
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 In this month’s Virtual Town Hall, we received questions from employers and workers across the state regarding the registration process, counting employees nationwide, and what benefits will be available to you in 2024 if your family is expecting a new child in 2023. Were you unable to join us live? Don’t worry, you can find all of our past recordings and slide decks on our webinars page.
We’ll be announcing the date of our next Virtual Town Hall soon and will be inviting all of our subscribers to attend as soon as we do. Stay tuned!
If you didn’t get your question answered during a town hall session, try us on Facebook Live! A couple times a month, we answer frequently asked questions we’ve received throughout the week and answer questions from our live audience. Some of the trending topics we’ve recently covered include:
- Deductions and deadlines
- Local Government Employers
- Out of state employers with some employees in Colorado
- Benefits for families expecting babies in 2023
We want to hear your personal stories. Please tell us how FAMLI could have or will help you. This month we’re featuring an anonymous story shared with us from a teacher in Northern Colorado:
My sister just gave birth to her first child this past August in another state. Hers was an at-risk pregnancy with health concerns for both mom and baby. She regularly saw specialists throughout the pregnancy. I traveled over 1,000 miles to be with her during her delivery, as she is a single mother and both of our parents have already passed away. We are each other's family.
My nephew was born after 87 hours of induction and labor, ending in a c-section. He is a beautiful miracle who was born with Tetrology of Fallot, a congenital heart defect that needs immediate and constant attention until the child is strong enough to withstand open heart surgery around 4-6 months.
I am a classroom teacher in Northern Colorado. This all happened the first week of school. I took all 5 of my personal days to be with them during that challenging and miraculous week.
At 5 months old, the baby was scheduled for his surgery. This is a 6-hour open heart surgery on an 11-pound baby. My sister would be waiting at the hospital alone. I had plans to be there for her during that time. I could not be with her, in part, because I had no remaining personal days. His surgery (nor his birth) qualified me for medical leave days, as he is not my parent, spouse, or child. This, despite the fact that both of the trips, in their entirety, would be spent in the hospital. I applied for unpaid days off, which I later had to cancel due to illness and travel concerns.
I will definitely be joining, even though my employer has opted out of the program.
—Anonymous
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Q: When are premium payments due?
A: Premium payments are due quarterly. The first payment to FAMLI is due April 30, 2023, and FAMLI is offering a 30-day grace period before payments will be considered late. The payment deadline will show as May 31, 2023, on your My FAMLI+ Employer dashboard.
Premiums are due according to the following schedule:
1st quarter (January, February, and March) April 30
2nd quarter (April, May, and June) July 31
3rd quarter (July, August, and September) October 31
4th quarter (October, November, and December) January 31
Q: Can Employers pay for the year in advance?
A: Employers cannot pay for the year in advance but may report and pay as they go for each quarter. Once employers report their initial wages for the quarter, they may go back in and make updates to the quarter's wages. If adjustments are made after the quarter’s due date, the adjustment will be treated as an amendment and may incur additional fees. For this reason, reporting as you go is not recommended. Please see the Employer User Guide for more details.
Q: What is the penalty for not paying on time?
A: Late fees may be assessed for delinquent premiums 30 days after the quarter ends. The fine may be up to $50 per employee, on top of the premium due.
Q: How do I determine the in-state status of employees?
A: An employee’s wages will be subject to premiums if:
- The employee's work is performed entirely within Colorado;
- The employee performs work both within and outside of Colorado, but the work performed outside of Colorado is incidental to the employee's work within Colorado, or is temporary or transitory and consists of isolated transactions; or
- The employee's work is not primarily localized in any state, but some work is performed in Colorado, and one of the following is true:
- The employee's base of operations is in Colorado, or if there is no base of operations, the place from which the employee's work is directed or controlled is in Colorado; or
- Neither the base of operations nor the place from which some part of the work is directed or controlled is not in any state in which part of the employee's work is performed, but the employee's individual residence is in Colorado. More information regarding localization can be found in the FAMLI Division's Premium Rules at 7 CCR 1107-1, Section 1.5.6.C.
We know this is complicated, so we've created the following decision tree to help employers determine Colorado localization when it comes to employees being subject to FAMLI:
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