November 2003 Your Questions Answered

Your Questions Answered

Have a personnel-related or business tax question? Members can get free information from CBIA’s experts. The phone number is 860-244-1900.

Q: A business downturn has made it necessary for us to place several employees on a part-time schedule. They’ll be working fewer than the 30-hour-per-week threshold necessary to maintain eligibility for our group health coverage. They have elected to continue their coverage under COBRA. If business picks up and we are able to increase their hours to a regular full-time schedule, can they resume insurance coverage as a regular eligible participant? And what if they must again be put on a part-time schedule? Would they again be eligible for COBRA continuation coverage? If yes, would the period of COBRA eligibility be reduced by the prior period of COBRA coverage, or would they be entitled to another full 18-month COBRA continuation period?

A: Once the employee meets the eligibility criteria as set forth in your insurance plan and company policy, he or she should be offered group insurance coverage as a regular full-time employee. Having been covered most recently as a COBRA “continuee” under your company plan does not interfere with their coverage rights as a regular full-time employee. If they later go back to a part-time schedule (fewer then 30 hours per week), that change would be another COBRA qualifying event, which would be unaffected by prior periods of COBRA coverage. In order to be eligible for COBRA, an employee or dependent must have been covered under the employer group plan on the date immediately preceding the qualifying event. The fact that your employees would have been previously covered under COBRA would have no bearing on their subsequent COBRA rights. As an example, let’s say an employee previously covered under COBRA for 12 months resumes coverage as a regular full-time employee and later loses eligibility for the group health plan again due to a reduction in hours. The employee would be entitled to a full 18 months of COBRA continuation coverage, not 18 minus the 12 months previously covered.

Q: Our forklift operators have all gone through the training that was first mandated several years ago under OSHA’s new standard for powered industrial truck operators. Is refresher training required at any point?

A: The standard does not require any specific frequency of refresher training. However, each of your forklift operators must be evaluated every three years as to his or her continuing competency to operate a forklift safely. This evaluation can be done in a number of ways, according to OSHA: having a discussion with the employee, observing the employee operating the forklift, or giving a performance test. If the evaluation reveals that the employee is not operating the forklift safely, then refresher training is required for that employee. Refresher training is also required if:

the operator is observed operating the forklift in an unsafe manner;

the operator has been involved in an accident or a near-miss accident;

the operator is assigned to drive a different type of powered industrial truck than the type on which he or she had originally been trained; or

a condition in the workplace changes in a manner that could affect safe operation of the truck.

For more information on forklift training, visit the "Training & Consulting Services" area at cbia.com.

Q: My business does cooperative direct-mail advertising in Connecticut. We started collecting sales tax from our clients this year after the state legislature changed the law. I’ve heard that the law was changed again. Do we still have to collect tax?

A: No. The legislature did change the law again this year. The first change, which took effect April 1, 2003, repealed the sales tax exclusion of media advertising and cooperative direct-mail advertising, which is why you had to start collecting tax. But legislators later restored the exclusion, effective July 1, 2003. For more information, go to the Department of Revenue Services (DRS) Web site or call the DRS at 1-800-382-9463 and ask for a copy of Special Notice 10 from 2003.