Big news from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES).
Two big pieces of info:
- Employers will no longer receive paper copies of snail mail notices — this may not sound like a big deal, but it’s huge. Employers only have 10 days to contest an employee’s potentially false unemployment claim. Often quite a few of these days have unfortunately already passed by the time the snail mail notice arrives. So although in theory this is a good move, it requires employers to regularly check their MyTaxIllinois account — potentially every few days, since there’s no other way to know when a former employee (who may have departed months ago) has made a claim.
- For now, #1 above isn’t that big a deal, inasmuch as for the meanwhile, IDES is going to presume that all claims are COVID-19 pandemic-related, unless the employer says otherwise. And as such, the employer unemployment tax rate will not be increased based on these charges. But when they decide to go back to letting unemployment claims affect the employer’s experience rating, this is going to be a huge problem, as most employers will not notice the claims in time to respond to those that should be challenged.
I see an opportunity for a business that monitors each employer’s MyTaxIllinois account for claims submitted, and alerts the employer immediately in case they would like to challenge the claim. Let me know in the comments if you find anyone offering this service. In the meantime, employers should actively check the IDES section of their account on MyTaxIllinois.
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