Donating Paid Time Off

franfields

We have a young employee (22)who was just diagnosed with Lupus and Breast Cancer. I assume she will need time off for treatment and possibly surgery. She doesn't have much accrued time off and we do not have a short term disability policy that would take her to LTD if it were to come to that.

She hasn't even been here long enough to legally qualify for FMLA. Can I still do that as long as we are willing to do that for anyone in a similar situation?

Has anyone put a policy in place for employees to donate their time off to someone else?

Sally

Sally Pettegrew
Our union employees have language in their collective bargaining agreement allowing this. "A musician may donate, at his/her discretion, up to 10 days sick leave to another musician in need, with a limit of 50 days donated to any one musician in any one contract year." [Their contract year is 9 months.] Hope this helps.

Gillian

If you will send me your fax number (shugh@westernu.edu)I will fax something that we put together. Unfortunately, the Board of Trustees didn't approve it, they did approve a case by case situation but they didn't want a standing policy.

System

Try also this page on HRhero.com:

[url]http://www.hrhero.com/policies/policyindex.shtml[/url]

Leslie, an Employers Forum member, shared her company's Donated Vacation Time Policy on that page.


Christy Reeder
Website Managing Editor
[url]www.HRhero.com[/url]

sambu

Our policy requires the employee to exhaust all of his/her accumulated sick/vacation/compensatory leave BEFORE donated leave kicks in. In order for the employee to receive donated leave from other employees, the employee must be absent from work for 10 CONSECUTIVE days due to a medically certified illness. The donating employee's sick leave balance cannot fall below 15 days in order to donate the days. Any sick leave donated, but not used, is returned to employees who donated the days.

We also have a sick leave reserve account (i.e., sick leave bank) which provides for 15 days in a 12-month period to all employees for medical/health reasons. When an employee resigns, any accumulated sick leave is turned over into the Sick Leave Reserve Account for future banked donations.

franfields

We also have a short term disability bank for each employee. We start them with 5 days when they are hired and they can add to it if they have days left at the end of the year.

I never thought about taking what is left by departing employees and using that as a basis for an emergency fund. I like the idea.

Rockie

Isn't donated time taxable to the party that receives it? Seems that I read something about this coming up when we tried to put in a policy donating time to an individual.

NaeNae55

Just like regular leave, employees must pay taxes on donated time when they receive and get paid for it. I imagine you would treat it the same way you would if the company just decided to keep adding time to the employee's leave on its own.

KDowney

Hi Rockie,

Yes, donated time is taxable to the recipient, not the donor. The IRS put out a Revenue Ruling on it in the 90's. Here is a link to the official text.

[url]http://www.taxlinks.com/rulings/1990/revrul90-29.htm[/url]

The IRS Publication 15-Circular E also addresses tax consequences of leave sharing programs.