Job Switching, Coffee Badging, ERTC Disclosure Discount, and States Prime for Business

[Gene Marks, host]

Hey everybody, this is Gene Marks and welcome to a special edition of the Week in Review, a Paychex THRIVE podcast. Happy holidays to everybody out there. This is the podcast where we take a look at some news from the previous week and give you some insights and analysis on it, right? So, let's get to it, shall we?

First of all, the news that I'm going to report to you comes from the hrgrapevine.com. They are reporting that more than a quarter of workers are ready to move on from their current jobs. This is a revelation that was among the findings of a new survey of 11,000 employees from eight countries around the world.

In the survey, the survey authors tested over 20 different needs, with roughly half being functional needs such as pay hours and benefits, and the other half being emotional needs, such as feeling valued and supported and doing work you enjoy.

Unsurprisingly, when asked directly what would drive these people to take a new job, employees’ answers are focused on functional factors, with pay the overwhelming top choice, followed by benefits and perks, work-life balance, work they enjoy and care about, and better learning opportunities. Many of them – more than a quarter – are ready to move on from their current jobs based on those factors.

Now, on a related story on foxbusiness.com, there is a rise in what FOX business or what one expert is calling coffee badging. It is a job trend. What is coffee badging exactly? Well, coffee badging is when somebody comes into the office just long enough to swipe their card and have a cup of coffee and then leave. It's kind of a form of a protest of all of these work-from-office mandates that a lot of companies are making their employees comply with.

I thought that was interesting. I mean, we heard about quiet quitting and other trends like this. Now, we've got employees that are, they're being told to come into the office. They come in the office, they swipe their card, they go and they have a cup of coffee and then they leave, and that is, again, just a form of protest about what they're doing. Not a very productive way, obviously, to be employed.

You can have different points of view about whether or not would agree with employees on this kind of practice or whether it makes you a little bit annoyed. But the bottom line is this: Employees, it is still a market for employees. We still have historically low unemployment right now, and job openings themselves still remain pretty high. So, employees do have the ability to move back and forth between jobs and some are doing that.

So, the one survey that I just told you is warning you that more than a quarter of workers are ready to move on from their current jobs. And yeah, compensation is a big factor, but flexibility and work-life balance are also huge factors and that is evidenced by this new trend of coffee badging, as well.

So, take a look at your policies for work from home and remote working and take a look at your compensation, as well. Are you paying your people, compensating them, giving them a good culture and work-life flexibility that really is suitable to them and to your company? You want to retain good people, right?

Alright, let's move on to the next news. I've talked before on this podcast about the employee retention tax credit, right? This was the COVID-era tax credit that you could apply for if you were impacted by COVID and you could get big money back from the IRS if you were eligible for this tax credit.

Well, unfortunately, there was a lot of bad actors that were applying for this credit, and so because of this, the IRS suspended the employee retention tax credit. They're going to resume it sometime in 2024, but right now it's suspended.

Well, just this past week, the IRS, and this is according to cnbc.com, they have unveiled a voluntary disclosure program for businesses that claimed this tax credit in error and want to pay the money back. The new voluntary disclosure program offers the chance to repay the credits back to the government but take a 20% discount to cover any promoter fees that you might have incurred. The deadline to apply for this is March 22, 2024. So, it's a limited time offer according to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. That's what he said during a press call during the previous week.

So, to qualify for the program, your company must provide the IRS with contact information for any advisors or tax preparers who assisted them with the erroneous claim, along with details about the services. You can then apply for the program to refund by filing form 15435 – that's 15435 – which can be submitted through the IRS's document upload tool. Participants won't owe interest or penalties if you repay 80% of the credit upon signing the closing agreement. However, interest and penalties will apply for repayment via installment agreements.

So, if you think that you filed this ERTC claim in error, whatever reason, and you got the money, well, you can give the money back and you can take a 20% discount when you give the money back. Fair enough. But you got to make sure you file the right form and do this by March 22, 2024.

Finally, a new analysis was done by the good people at Salon Management. That's salontoday.com. They came up with the top 10 states where small business is set to boom in 2024. So, they analyzed search data from Google Keyword Planner for more than a hundred terms related to the terms “side hustle” and “small business”. The average number of monthly searches for these hundred search terms are calculated for each state as a proportion of their residents.

So, you want to know the top three states where business is expected to boom in 2024. Number one was Utah. Utah was found to have the most people looking to begin a new business in 2024 with 365 searches on average for every 100,000 people. The most Googled search term in Utah included “side hustle” and “side hustle ideas”.

Second place is Arizona. So, Arizona had 357 searches – not too far behind Utah – for every 100,000 people. The top search terms included “side hustle”, “small-business owner” and “side hustles from home”.

And the third state where small business is expected to boom in 2024 is Colorado 351 searches. The top search terms in Colorado included “small business”, “how to start small business”, and “easy side hustle”. In Colorado, there are 691,000 registered small businesses, so there's a lot and a lot more to come.

You can see more. It's salontoday.com. You can find this column. It's the top 10 states where small business is set to boom in 2024.

You've been listening to Paychex's Week in Review podcast, the THRIVE podcast. My name is Gene Marks. If you need any advice or you'd like to suggest guests for our THRIVE podcast, please visit us at payx.me/thrivetopics.

Want to say thank you, have a great holiday, and a great new year, as well, and we will see you again in 2024. Take care.

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