Another Safety & Health Update for Virginia

Employers in Virginia won’t be surprised to hear that the state’s Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) has released an update to the Job Safety & Health Protection notice.

What’s New for Safety & Health?

The notice features a new requirement for public sector employers, as well as a new publication date of January 2019.

Previously exempt public sector employers—including all departments, agencies, institutions, or other political subdivisions of the Commonwealth of Virginia—are now subject to the penalty provisions of the state OSHA (VOSH) law.

What’s Next for the Virginia Poster?

We are anticipating some additional changes to the Virginia poster in 2019, which we’ve outlined below.

Earned Income Tax Credit

If history repeats itself, an updated version of the state’s  Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) notice should be released sometime in March. The notice will feature new maximum credit amounts for the tax year 2018.

These credit amounts vary based on certain factors. For example: whether an individual is single or married; whether an individual has no children or a certain number of children; and the amount of income an individual, or a married couple filing jointly, has earned.

Federal OSHA Penalties

The federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) has announced the annual increases to the maximum penalties for employers’ serious and other-than-serious violations and willful and repeat violations. These changes will probably cause an update to the Job Safety & Health Protection notice; however, the penalty amounts for the state VOSH plan may differ from the federal penalties.

Even though the new federal penalty amounts have been released, they must first be published in the Federal Register before they can take effect. Under normal circumstances, the penalty amounts would have been published by 1/15/19, but due to the partial government shutdown, there has been a delay.

In the meantime, we’ll keep watching for changes to the VOSH penalties as well as the update to the EITC notice.

Let Us Keep You in Compliance

Due to a pattern of more than one change per year to our Virginia poster, we encourage you to order our 1-Year Compliance Plan, so that you will automatically receive the updated Virginia poster as soon as it is available. And because we provide free poster updates for mandatory changes, no matter how many occur during the plan year, you can always count on Poster Compliance Center to keep your business in compliance!