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131: Certified Payroll – The Davis Bacon Act

The law was designed to require any contractor or subcontractor working on a federally funded or "public works" project to pay a "prevailing wage" to its laborers or mechanics.

Davis Bacon Act – Just another stupid federal law with major unintended consequences like pricing out smaller contractors and taxpayers overpaying for services.  Today I wanted to discuss certified payroll and how it differs from your normal everyday payroll practices. First of all, what is meant by certified payroll? Generally speaking, certified payroll occurs whenever…

About the author, Thomas

I have 20 of years insurance industry experience in C-level management, focusing on all aspects of workers compensation, risk management, loss control, employee benefits, HR, payroll and professional employer organization (“PEO”) operations. Currently, I am the owner and CEO of Humanly HR, and founder and host of SmallBiz Brainiac; a podcast providing employer intelligence to small business owners.

2 Comments

  1. Nancy Smyth on June 25, 2017 at 5:18 am

    Local and/or state specific certified payroll requirements are more complicated than Federal requirements. For example, let’s take California. In California there are several paper forms that could be required, plus there are electronic reporting requirements as well.

    While most payroll services “should” be able to produce the certified payroll reports – they do not, or if they do they are not cost effective and do not interface with any electronic reporting requirements.

    • Thomas Rock Lindsay on July 25, 2017 at 2:13 pm

      Nancy,

      Thanks for your input. We will take a look at your software since it’s good to know what solutions are out there. Oh, and thanks for listening 🙂

      Kind regards,
      Tom Lindsay, CPCU

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