The spoils of winning the Masters are numerous and overwhelming, as 2021 champion Hideki Matsuyama is about to find out. There’s the green jacket, of course, and the Masters trophy, plus the chance to tee it up every April at Augusta National for the rest of your life. You have a seat reserved at the Champions Dinner each year and a space in the Champions locker room whenever you’re back down Magnolia Lane. Oh, and your golf legacy is fairly secure, “Masters champion” mentioned any time you’re introduced in public. READ MORE
Revisiting withholding on equity compensation
Employers have various tools to attract and retain talent: cash, equity, fringe benefits, and others. Equity compensation has dual benefits of tying key employees' compensation to the company's performance while often offering such employees a tax deferral. Many employers may have looked to equity compensation during the COVID-19 crisis to retain valued employees who are vital in helping the company rebound from a downturn, while also benefiting the company's cash position. READ MORE
Advantages and Disadvantages of Raising Federal Minimum Wage to $15
In January 2021, legislators introduced the “Raise the Wage Act of 2021,” to increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour by 2025. If passed, it would be the first increase in more than a decade, the longest stretch since 1938. READ MORE
Tax Court Rules S Corp Payouts Are Wages
Frequently, S corporation owners treat wages as other forms of payment, such as distributions of payment to reduce their overall tax bite. But the IRS is quick to contest these claims and the Tax Court recently stepped in to offer some clarity. READ MORE
Chuck Schumer Eyes a Second Shot at Raising the Minimum Wage Through Reconciliation
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is considering putting a $15 minimum wage into the next reconciliation package, which will be focused on infrastructure, multiple sources familiar with the New York senator’s thinking told The Intercept. READ MORE
Don’t Let Misalignment in Executive Compensation Create Your Own “Black Sox Scandal”
In many companies, executive compensation is determined or negotiated according to an established compensation structure that is derived from their talent acquisition and retention strategy which in turn is driven by their business goals. Typically, a company would identify key growth indicators and ensure that each key executive’s incentives are aligned with company success. READ MORE
A look at efforts to tie executive compensation to ESG in North America
If certain ESG metrics have a material impact on a business’ performance – which is widely accepted – then it follows that investors, regulators and proxy advisers will likely seek assurances that executives are incentivized to meet expectations. READ MORE
Supreme Court Weighs Whether NCAA Is Illegally 'Fixing' Athlete Compensation
As March Madness heads into its final days, college athletes are playing on a different kind of court: the Supreme Court. On Wednesday the justices heard arguments in a case testing whether the NCAA's limits on compensation for student athletes violate the nation's antitrust laws. READ MORE
New Analysis Reveals 20 Years of Stagnant Wage Growth
American workers have seen their real earnings grow by less than 10% over the last two decades, with a growing racial gap where gains by Black workers are half that of their White counterparts, according to new earnings data released by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP).
LISEP today launched a new measure of economic performance called the True Weekly Earnings (TWE) report, which is designed to provide a clearer picture of worker earnings than the Median Weekly Earnings Report released quarterly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Unlike the BLS report, LISEP includes all members of the workforce – including unemployed and part-time workers – to arrive at a more realistic measure of worker median earnings and their growth over time. READ MORE
Wage data show US workers earn 19% less than federal estimates
American workers are making less than official estimates show, according to new analysis.
U.S. workers earn a median weekly wage of $797, or $41,456 a year, according to the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, which analyzed data up until 2020. That’s 19% below official estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a widely-used measure of pay. READ MORE
Do not mourn the wage gap
Many progressive feminists mark “Equal Pay Day” as a sad day, the day that women would have to work into 2021 to catch up with men’s earnings from 2020. Equal Pay Day this year is March 24. Indeed, if the wage gap were really what it is often presented to be -- evidence of widespread discrimination against women -- then Equal Pay Day would be more than sad. It would be an outrage. And it would represent widespread violation of existing laws that prohibit discrimination. READ MORE
Americans Made an Additional $1.1 Trillion Last Year on Stimulus
Americans earned an additional $1.1 trillion last year -- the most ever in data dating back to 1930 -- thanks entirely to stimulus checks and other government aid.
Total U.S. personal income rose 6.1% last year to $19.7 trillion as a surge in pandemic-era aid outpaced gains in wages, property values and other sources of wealth, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. READ MORE
S&P 500 failing to implement diversity or align pay with performance
The largest firms in the US are failing to align their executive compensation with company performance, according to new research from CGLytics, which finds an ‘arbitrary’ approach being taken to executive pay among S&P 500 companies.
CGLytics’ second annual S&P 500 report, titled ‘Do 2020 trends foretell the future?’ questions whether the pay cuts announced by companies in the grip of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic were a ‘facade’, with an average cut of just 6 percent on CEO pay for the financial year 2019. READ MORE
Starting salaries to rise for 2021 college grads
Average starting salaries for graduates in the college class of 2021 are expected to increase, with salaries for engineering majors projected to be up 1.6% to $71,088, according to data from the 2021 Salary Survey released by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Some majors will see increases are on the smaller side, although salaries for computer science grads are an exception. Computer science majors include computer science, information sciences and systems, and software applications. READ MORE
White House clarifies which wealthy individual filers will get snagged by Biden tax hike
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday said that individuals who make up to $400,000 won’t pay an extra penny in taxes under President Biden’s new plan.
The president has been clear all along that families earning up to $400,000 would not be the target of the tax hike, but it was unclear whether there would be a lower income threshold for individual filers. READ MORE
Women lose an average of $406,000 to the wage gap in their lifetime
This year, Equal Pay Day falls on March 24, a date that symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn the same as men did in the previous year.
The most recent estimates show women across the nation earned about 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to 2019 data from the US Census. That amount changes when broken down by race -- with many women of color faring much worse. READ MORE
Employers may need to pay up, as more than half of US workers plan to ask for raise
More than half of U.S. employees say they plan to ask for a pay raise within the next 12 months, according to a new survey.
Fifty-four percent of workers are looking for a pay raise, bonus or cost-of-living increase in 2021 following a year of virus-induced financial hardship, according to a recent survey by Glassdoor, which offers insights about jobs and companies. READ MORE
A Ridiculous Double Standard
The sales department in most companies gets rewarded for bringing in new business. Shouldn’t the tax department be rewarded for identifying and taking advantage of available tax credits and incentives READ MORE
Incredible Shrinking Income Inequality
The refrain is all too familiar: Widening income inequality is a fatal flaw in capitalism and an “existential” threat to democracy. From 1967 to 2017, income inequality in the U.S. spiked 21.4%, and everyone from U.S. senators to the pope says it’s an urgent problem. Yet the data upon which claims about income inequality are based are profoundly flawed. READ MORE
Why Salary History Bans Matter To Securing Equal Pay
Employers’ reliance on salary history in hiring and compensation decisions is a textbook example of structural bias. While the common practice of asking a job applicant about their prior salary may seem innocuous on the surface, it can have unintended, harmful consequences, including barring qualified candidates from job opportunities and systematically relegating women and workers of color—particularly women of color—to lower pay that may have been set lower because of discrimination. READ MORE