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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 02, 2010 | Updated 0 hours, 27 minutes ago
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4/9/2008 2:25:00 PM | 1 comment  | Email this article • Print this article • Comment on this article | Options for businesses
Employers can ease their employee's child care burden by:
• Providing on-site child care center - Employer provides child care at work site.
• Providing other direct child care services - Companies can partner with other employers to provide a child care center, form a network of providers who operate from their homes or sponsor before or after-school programs.
• Assisting employees financially
Dependent Care Spending Assistance Plan (DCAP) - Money is taken from an employee's gross salary and put into a non-taxable spending account to pay for child care.
Flexible Benefit Plans - Employees may choose from a menu of benefits, customizing their own package.
Child Care Subsidies - Workers get child care allowance for child care arrangement of their choice. Contribution is a flat amount, percentage of cost or sliding scale depending on family income.
Child Care Vendor Plan - Employer, or group of employers, contract with a child care program to set aside a certain number of slots for employees. The company pays part of the costs directly to provider.
• Paying for referral services - Employer pays Oregon's resource and referral agency to help employees find child care. "They hold the hand of the parent through the entire process and do follow-up," said Cynthia Hurkes, business liaison for the Oregon Child Care Resource and Referral Network. "It's customized to the employer."
• Provide Flex-time otions - "Parents, when they're given a list of options, what they want more than anything is flex-time," Hurkes said. "They want to take care of their own kids."
Examples of flex-time include:
Compressed time - Working more hours per day and less days per week.
Flexible scheduling - Employees work core hours, but have flexility about when to work the remaining hours.
Job sharing - Two or more employees share the same job.
Telecommuting - Working from home one or more days per week.
Nationally, "telecommuting is a more widely-used option than it ever was," she said, adding Oregon is taking longer to embrace the concept of telecommuting.
Paid Time Off (PTO) Bank - Vacation days, sick leave and personal days are lumped together into PTO days. "You can manage your own time," Hurkes said. "Lets say I've accumulated 100 hours and my child is sick - I call in and say I need three days off. It takes the guilt and the lying away."
Many of these options make employers eligible for tax credits:
• Tax credit (state) -Oregon is one of about 20 states that offer a tax credit for child care assistance to employees - the Oregon Dependent Care Tax Credit. "This tax credit allows employers to offset 50 percent of its child care expenditures against its state tax liability up to $2,500 per year."
• Tax credit (federal) - Employers receive a 25 percent credit for costs of acquiring, constructing, rehabilitating or expanding a child care facility, operating a child care facility or contracting with a third-party provider.
Information provided by Oregon Child Care Resource & Referral Network.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Thursday, May 29, 2008
Article comment by:
Cesareo Texidor, PA-C MPH
We need a detailed step by step information sheet on the state and federal Tax credit to be presented to the HR folks during the meeting at the WEE CARE.
June Moreland needs to be on this meeting at WEE CARE. Lets get Cynthia Hurkes business liaison to make a presentation at the meeting. Lets not forget to invite St Anthony CEO and especiality his wife along with the board of directors to attend this meeting. Remember Ted Fox the new CEO has the OK to proceed with the remodle the WEE CARE for 5 Doctors offices. At a cost of >3,000,000.00. They can help me remodel the Bimart for Ten Doctors for $1,000,000.00, a savings of $2,000,000.00. I will give him space at the BIMART in trade. My Offer to the owners of BiMart is very close to becoming a done deal I will know in the next few days.
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