ยง 502. Wage reporting - findings and policy. The legislature hereby
finds and declares that New York state is committed to developing the
most efficient and effective system possible for administering the
unemployment insurance system which, for more than a half century, has
provided financial support to workers who have lost their jobs through
no fault of their own.
Unlike all other states and territories, which administer their
unemployment insurance systems pursuant to a wage reporting system
whereby employers report employee wages on a regular basis, New York
maintains a wage request system. In order to acquire the enormous amount
of wage data necessary to calculate unemployment insurance benefits
using such a system, the department is required to send out hundreds of
thousands of wage requests to employers every year. These requests are
for information which, in large part, is submitted by employers on a
quarterly basis to the statewide wage reporting system administered by
the department of taxation and finance.
Given the size and complexity of the unemployment insurance system, an
increase in efficiency will necessarily result in significant
improvements in the services provided to benefit claimants and
employers. The improvements for benefit claimants that would result from
the implementation of a wage reporting system include more timely and
accurate entitlement and benefit rate determinations, a reduction in the
need to rely upon a claimant's own tax and wage statements and a
decrease in claimant overpayments which must be recovered at a later
date. As for employers, they would, for the large majority of benefit
claims filed, no longer be required to provide employee wage data upon
request, which would remove a significant employer burden as well as the
potential for a fifty dollar penalty each time a wage request is not
answered in a timely manner. Wage reporting would also reduce the number
of employers incorrectly charged for benefits.
Furthermore, the department is accountable under federal and state law
to measure the success of training, employment and reemployment
initiatives operated pursuant to such laws. The assessment of individual
performance is the best way to measure program quality and to develop
program improvements. Job placement, employment duration and earnings
are basic outcomes used to measure such performance. Information
surveys, traditionally used to collect such data, have proved to be both
expensive and unreliable because of low response rates and faulty recall
by those who respond. Using the statewide wage reporting system to track
such performance outcomes will avoid these problems and produce a
reliable system of accountability while placing no additional burdens on
employers.
Accordingly, for the above reasons, section one hundred seventy-one-a
of the tax law is amended to provide the department with complete access
to the wage reporting files maintained by the department of taxation and
finance as the first stage in a transition to an unemployment insurance
system based upon such wage reporting files, with the express
requirement that the department shall design and operate such system so
that an individual eligible for benefits under the current law would be
eligible for the same amount of benefits under a new system based upon
the wage reporting files. In addition, complete access to the wage
reporting files is granted for administration of the department's
employment security programs as well as for evaluation of the effect on
earnings of participation in training programs with respect to which the
department has reporting, monitoring or evaluating responsibilities.