Posted on 09/24/2006 8:27:44 PM PDT by GinJax
When they were called up for military service in the wake of 9/11, hundreds of uniformed city workers in the Reserves faced the suspension of their city health and pension benefits. The city offered them an option: it would keep paying their salaries and continue their benefits, but when they returned they would have to repay the city their city salary or their military pay, whichever was less.
On its face, the offer made sense. And many reservists had only a few days to get their affairs together before shipping out — hardly enough time to consult accountants. Nearly all took the deal. As the war dragged on, more than 1,600 city employees, mostly police officers, signed up for the benefits program.
Now the bills from the city are coming due, for far more than many veterans imagined they would have to pay — as much as $200,000 — and often for more money than they ever received.
The city is demanding that the veterans repay their gross salaries, even though they never saw about a third of the money, which went for taxes and other deductions. The commissioner of administrative services, Martha K. Hirst, said veterans should be able to get back the difference between gross and take-home pay by amending their tax returns. But several tax accountants said the city had created an accounting quagmire.
David Gitel, a tax accountant in Manhattan, said that if the employees paid the money back over several years — which many will have to do — rather than in a lump sum, they could lose thousands of dollars in income-tax and social security payments.
“It’s an interesting experience,” Mr. Gitel said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Beg pardon,,,i forgot, imho,,,after all,,,we always get
best deal possible,,,imho,,,thanks !
Good point. I agree. The troops should be able to opt to pay their miliary pay scale back to the city.
They already have that option. The point of contention is that the city wants to include BAS/BAQ in calculating their military pay scale.
The alternative was to forego keeping their police benefits while they were deployed. Their choice. It still seems like a good deal to me. Keep your benefits and whichever salary was higher. You can even stick it into a six-month CD and get interest off of it before paying the excess back.
But to claim, "hey, sorry, I spent it all already, you can't have back what we agreed to as I want to keep both salaries" seems not right.
Does the city pay for their officer's homes in the U.S.? If not then how the hell can they claim that housing is part of the pay for troops on active duty? It's more of a necessity than a perk?
Military life isn't like life in the private sector. Those troops are on duty 24/7. Instead of working a 40 hour week, they are on call at a moments notice.
Tell you what, if the city wants to buy each officer a new home of their choice in the U.S. upon return, perhaps I'd ammend my reponse.
OUTRAGEOUS!
I'm guessing that some medical personnel on the NYC payroll, if they had taxfree war zone pay, could bring in over $200,000 if they put in a long tour, which from what I've read, all medical personnel do. Probably also had senior NCO's and NG CO's who were also senior NYPD/MTA brass who were called up, especially those in MP units (from what I know of first hand from LEO's in the NJ NG), were assigned long tours of duty.
This is a good deal for everyone who signed up, as long as their family members with the checkbooks and credit cards in NY had some financial sense. Sounds like some didn't.
I have a similar arrangement with my company for jury duty. The companies gives up to ten days of paid "leave" for its employees in a year if they get called up for jury duty. As part of this arrangement, we must give our jury duty reimbursement checks to the company in return.
The problem is this (basically an accounting error) :
The city is demanding that the veterans repay their gross salaries, even though they never saw about a third of the money, which went for taxes and other deductions.
There's no other way to do it properly, since gross pay is the "bottom line" number in all official aspects. And the income tax may be refunded anyway if a reservist has to write a check to his employer for it. If you pay $10,000 in taxes on $50,000 in income and then have to write a check for $50,000 to reimburse your employer, I suspect the entire $50,000 would be fully deductible on next year's return anyway.
It seems as if there should be an easier way to do it.
Maybe so. But every financial transaction of this kind has to be backed by official documentation -- and "net pay" is not an official measure of income under any rules/regulations. Otherwise, the reservist who fills out a W-4 form with 4 exemptions (and therefore has less money in taxes taken out of his paycheck) will have to pay back less than the guy who filed his W-4 form with only 2 exemptions -- even if they both earned the same gross income.
They are to be charged for money they don't receive: They are to be charged for BEFORE tax monies when they have received AFTER tax monies.
Bloomberg SUCKS!
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