What Employers Need to Know about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Description:

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law on July 4, 2025, is the most expansive federal legislation impacting employers since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This sweeping law includes retroactive provisions to January 1, 2025, and will have cascading compliance effects through 2028. At its core, the OBBBA creates complex new reporting, tax, and benefits obligations for employers—especially those in industries with tipped workers, hourly employees, or high-turnover staffing models.

Employers must now navigate new payroll deduction opportunities tied to employee qualified tips and overtime, requiring updates to payroll software, withholding procedures, and employee communications. The law also introduces mandatory reporting changes to W‑2 forms, including new line items and occupational coding for tipped and overtime-eligible employees.

Additionally, the bill significantly alters the benefits landscape, including permanent telehealth HSA expansions, increased Dependent Care FSA limits, expanded employer-provided child care credits, and the option to facilitate “Trump Accounts” for employee family saving.

At the compliance level, employers face heightened enforcement risk, particularly in the area of immigration, with ICE audit expansion, new I‑9 verification scrutiny, and the introduction of non-waivable per-hire immigration fees. These measures necessitate internal audits of hiring and verification practices to avoid steep penalties.

This session will decode the law’s complex provisions and focus exclusively on what HR, Payroll, Legal, and Operations professionals must do now to comply, adapt, and benefit.

What You’ll Gain:

• Payroll Modernization: Learn about tracking qualified tips and overtime separately on W‑2s.
• Immigration Compliance: Understand new compliance requirements surrounding ICE audits, non-waivable employer fees, and verification processes.
• Benefit Plans 2.0: Explore updates to HSAs, dependent‑care FSAs, ACA options, Trump Accounts, and vehicle loan interest deductions.
• Tax Policy Overview: Contextualize employer impacts amidst SALT cap increases, Medicaid work rules, and SNAP cuts.
• Risk Mitigation: Avoid pitfalls in tip-pooling, overtime reclassification, and labor-law compliance.

Areas will be covered during the Session:
• Structure and limits of no‑tax deductions for qualified tips & overtime; income-phaseout thresholds
• Reporting obligations: required W‑2 and 1099 fields, occupation codes, and Treasury guidance
• Tip-pooling & FLSA compliance: navigating legal risk when modifying tip policies
• Payroll system updates: capturing premiums, overtime reporting, and recalibrating classification
• Enhanced benefits regime: HSAs, FSA expansion, ACA Marketplace options
• Immigration and hiring scrutiny: analysis on ICE inspections and I‑9 verifications
• Medicaid/SNAP changes: employer role in benefits eligibility and communications
• Retroactive & phased compliance: mandatory adjustments for tax year 2025 implementable now, with rolling deadlines through 2028

Target Audience:

Whether you are an employer, Human Resources professional, supervisor or in-house counsel seeking to create a supportive workplace culture or an employee navigating the dynamics of all the recent changes to Labor & Employment Law, this class will provide valuable insights and practical guidance.