Idaho employers catch break on taxes to support workers who lost jobs from pandemic

Idaho businesses won’t have to foot the full bill for unemployment compensation paid to workers furloughed or laid off as the coronavirus gripped Idaho. The nation’s taxpayers will, eventually.

The Idaho Department of Labor said Friday that it will keep its standard unemployment-insurance tax rate on employers at the legal minimum in 2021: 1% of payroll costs. That’s despite a surge of claims for unemployment compensation that placed heavy demands on the state’s unemployment trust fund this year.

Normally, employers pay all of the cost of unemployment compensation through the tax. Employees and other taxpayers pay nothing. But when the pandemic plunged the nation into crisis in March, Congress passed a roughly $2 trillion relief law, the CARES Act, to provide coronavirus relief. One part of the law gave $150 billion to state and tribal governments, with latitude to spend as they saw fit on pandemic relief.

Idaho’s share was $1.2 billion. Gov. Brad Little tapped $200 million of that to help the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund.

Read more: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article247962880.html