June Compliance Updates: Form I-9 Remote Flexibility Ending Soon

Form I-9 Remote Flexibility Ends July 31

The temporary flexibilities in place for COVID-19-related changes to Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, will come to an end on July 31, 2023. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has recently made an announcement stating that employers must conduct in-person physical document inspections for employees who had their documents inspected remotely during the temporary flexibilities by August 30, 2023.

This new announcement provides employers with extra time to carry out the necessary in-person physical inspections of identity and employment authorization documents, and make appropriate annotations on the Form I-9 for this group of individuals.

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New law protecting pregnant workers goes into effect

A new federal law protecting the rights of pregnant workers went into effect on June 27.

The legislation, officially signed by President Biden at the close of 2022, mandates that employers with more than 15 employees must offer reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees, as well as those in the process of postpartum recovery and those who require pumping breast milk while at work.

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TIGTA Congressional Report Projects Some Progress for Erroneous ERC Recovery and Review of Fraudulent Claims

On June 7, 2023, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released its Semiannual Report to Congress for October 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023. The report summarizes TIGTA's activities for the reporting period as it relates to ensuring that IRS funding provided under the Inflation Reduction Act is used effectively. The report contains highlights of TIGTA's work and provides updates on IRS backlogs.

Current status of payroll return backlog. As Payroll on Checkpoint has reported, the IRS continues to experience delays in the processing of Form 941 (Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return). As of June 2, 2023, the IRS has 2 million unprocessed 941s. Form 941-X, which is used to file corrections to a previously filed Form 941 also has a backlog in processing with 740,000 returns unprocessed as of May 31, 2023.