When your reporting unit has employees who will retire at the end of the school year and who have additional wages to be paid, such as longevity or lump-sum payments, the timing of the payments will affect the retiree’s pension. Any reportable payments made within 30 days of the retirement effective date will be included in the employee’s final average compensation, an amount that impacts the person’s pension amount, but after that period they will not be. (Summer spread wages are not bound by the 30-day rule.)
Furthermore, payments made more than 30 days after the retirement effective date would be considered retiree wages, and you would then need to follow the rules for reporting retiree wages. If the retiree has not actually returned to work, reporting these types of payments as retiree wages could have a negative impact on the retiree’s pension. Please see section 9.01: Earnings of retirees who return to work in the Reporting Instruction Manual for additional information.
Now that the school year has ended, many reporting tasks are shifting toward summer activities, including retirements or preparation for new employees. An updated End of School Year Checklist is now available on the Employer Information site to use as a reminder of these tasks.
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As a reminder, employees with tax-deferred payment (TDP) agreements will receive an interest update in July.
TDP agreements that were initiated on or after Jan. 1, 2004, are subject to 8% compound interest applied annually on July 1 to the unpaid balance. This is included in terms of the completed TDP Agreement Form (R0392C).
As the employer, it's your responsibility to update the employee’s remaining TDP balance with the TDP interest in your payroll records each year after July 1. The amount appears in the Total TDP Interest Amount column of the TDP Agreement Details spreadsheet.
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 See section 10.06: Updating payments due to TDP annual interest in the Reporting Instruction Manual (RIM) for more information.
Effective July 1, 2023, a new section on overload pay will be added to the Reporting Instruction Manual (RIM) 4.04: Special Situations. ORS has also updated this RIM section by cleaning up the additional duties section.
The overload pay section (effective July 1, 2023) explains when payments made to teachers with additional students in their classroom are considered reportable compensation:
- When the payment is offered district-wide to all employees working under the 1240 teaching classification.
- The payment is specifically documented in the contract ahead of the payment being made.
See 4.04: Special situations in the RIM for more details.
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Updates to the reporting website were completed in May, and new ones are coming soon.
You may have noticed these improvements implemented in late May:
- Select All to the View Feedback File screen. This new functionality allows you to select all the unread records and mark them as read without having to click on each record.
- Ability to download both sections on the View Election Status screen. This functionality will allow users to be able to download detail functionality for both New Members Yet to Make Election and New Members Who Have Made Their Election sections. The report also includes the DTL4 Adjustments Completed within the report.
The following updates will be available soon.
- Negative adjustments made to Employee Health Contributions will now show as a positive value instead of a negative value on View Employee Info screen. The system will also credit the correct amount of employee health contributions on the employer statement.
- You will now be alerted with an error message on the Error Report page if a record won’t load due to a special character being included in a DTL1, DTL2, DTL3 or DTL4.
- If creating a New Employer Contact, an automated email to the newly created contact will now include their user id for login. This will avoid an unnecessary call to the Web Reporting Call Center to obtain the login information.
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Employer and member contribution rates for the upcoming fiscal year are now published and posted on the Employer Information website under Contribution Rates. These rate tables will go into effect on Oct. 1, 2023.
From the Contribution Rates page, click the link for your reporting unit type (universities or non-universities) and you'll find the newly published tables under “Current and Upcoming Rates.”
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Voya has created a resource for new hires. The New Hire Checklist is comprised of 10 action items for all new employees to complete to get them started on their journey to retirement. Items include the importance of making a retirement plan election, designating beneficiaries, and more.
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