South Carolina Legislative Update – Week Three

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The General Assembly returned to the State House this week for another productive week in this year’s legislative session. Two notable bills that were worked on include:

  • Unemployment Insurance Tax Delinquency Relief (H.3992) – On Wednesday, the House Labor, Commerce and Industry (LCI) Committee’s Business and Commerce Subcommittee advanced a bill that would provide relief to employers that are delinquent in their unemployment insurance (UI) taxes by allowing them to enter into installment plans with the Department of Employment and Workforce (DEW) and avoid escalation to UI tax rate class 20. The SC Chamber is supportive of this legislation as we believe it will provide significant relief to small businesses by ensuring that they don’t have to close their doors simply because they miss a UI tax payment and spiral into a cycle of tax debt. The bill now heads to the full House LCI Committee.
     
  • Maximum Unemployment Benefits (H.4710) – On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee advanced a bill that would accelerate the re-employment process of recently unemployed individuals across the state, ensuring that during times of low unemployment, individuals are not incentivized to stay on the sidelines and collect unemployment benefits when there are high-paying jobs going unfilled. Under current South Carolina law, individuals can claim unemployment benefits for a maximum rate of 20 weeks. Under this proposal, the duration of unemployment benefits will be indexed to the unemployment rate so that in times of low unemployment, the maximum duration of benefits will be 12 weeks and in times of high unemployment, the maximum duration will be 20 weeks. The bill now heads to the House floor.