Virginia Employment Commission Changes || Effective July 1, 2025

 The Virginia Employment Commission has stated that the tax rate on unemployment claims will be rising for 2025 (rates have apparently been frozen since COVID), and notices will be coming out in mid-December. This means you will want to be sure to contest cases that are due to misconduct because awards of benefits will have increased financial consequences. In order to contest those cases, you need to make sure you are getting notice of the employee’s filing. Anecdotally, we have determined that many clients have not been receiving the VEC’s notice of request for information from the employer. The VEC states that it is currently mailing and emailing the notices for the past several months. However, the VEC is recommending that all employers move to SIDES (referenced below). Because regular mail is so slow, the request for information may be received untimely, and if the person receiving the email is no longer there, the request will be missed. This is extremely important because starting July 1, 2025, a regimen of fees and legal consequences will be applied to employers who cannot prove that the Commission did not deliver the request to the physical or electronic mailing address specified in writing by the employer. This is much different than an employer saying that they never received what was delivered to the mail or email address. See Virginia Code § 60.2-619.

Source(s): Ford Harrison, e-mail received on November 22, 2024