“The reality is there is no system that can support both DOD and the VA at the same time,” said LaVerne Council, the VA’s assistant secretary for information and technology. She spoke during a Senate subcommittee hearing to review the VA’s EHR system, VistA, or Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture.

The VA is on schedule to finish the next stage of VistA updates, said Council. She told the committee that the agency hopes the improvements will lead to more efficiency and interoperability by 2018. However, Government Accountability Office (GAO) official Valerie Melvin claimed that delays in modernizing VistA has caused the program to become outdated. As a result, the system faces technical difficulties.

Melvin contended that the VA and DOD interoperability initiative has been hindered by the lack of “outcome-oriented goals and metrics to clearly define what they aim to achieve” through interoperability. “We have not seen clear planning across VA and DOD.” Melvin testified that a modernized VA EHR system is still years away.

A 2015 GAO report recommended the two government agencies work together to create a strong healthcare network for both service members and veterans. However, the attempt was unsuccessful due to their different IT infrastructures. Council said the VA may either “continue with VistA, shift to a commercial EHR platform as DOD is doing, or some combination of both.”

Alicia Thornhill filed the lawsuit October 9 in the Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas. She claims that her employer prevented her from advancing during her eight years of employment, despite less-qualified male employees being promoted to higher positions.

Thornhill claims in the lawsuit that she was hired in May 2005 and is the only woman working in the company’s IT server department. She claims that male employees who were unqualified and inexperienced or who had committed work infractions were promoted ahead of her, even though she had a positive work history.

Thornhill also claims that she has been repeatedly denied the opportunity to receive training that would allow her to advance in her employment. According to the lawsuit, the company granted requests by male employees in the IT department to receive training in various locations across the country, but Thornhill’s requests were not approved or denied outright.

The lawsuit also alleges that Thornhill was held to a different standard of discipline than her male colleagues, who were spared the discipline expected of her.

Thornhill has requested a jury trial.

Gregory D. Jordan is an employment lawyer. To learn more, visit http://www.theaustintriallawyer.com or call 512-419-0684.

Families in need of a private-duty caregiver have a laundry list of items to account for during the hiring process. Most importantly is selecting the right candidate, but once that item is crossed off the list, it’s crucial to account for the expenses of hiring this new household employee.

When you make a caregiver a compensation offer, it is critical that both of you are on the same page as to what the Gross Wages and Net Pay will be. For those in the professional world, this seems like a no-brainer, but it’s actually quite common for caregivers and families to confuse the two. Just to be clear, Gross Wages refers to the amount of money an employee earns prior to taxes being withheld and Net Pay is the amount the employee actually takes home.

So just as in the professional world, if you’re hiring private-duty care, it’s paramount that the compensation offer is in gross wages. It’s impossible for you to know what your caregiver’s Net Pay should be before they accept your offer because you don’t know exactly how much in taxes to withhold until the appropriate paperwork is filled out.

If you have already offered a Net Pay amount, feel free to use our Employee Paycheck Calculator to translate it into Gross Wages. Once the caregiver has filled out a Federal W-4 and a New York IT-2104, the calculator can determine their federal, state, and perhaps local income tax withholdings.

This is extremely important for you to do since all compensation you pay your employee must be reported to the government in terms of Gross Wages. It’s also the figure that will be used to calculate your caregiver’s benefits and your taxes and tax breaks. For example, let’s say a family (who doesn’t live in Yonkers or New York City) offers a candidate $550 a week, but it’s Net Pay. The caregiver is Single with no children, so she fills out her W-4 as Single with 2 allowances and her IT-2014 as Single with 0 allowances. Using our Employee Paycheck Calculator, the family can easily make the adjustment from Net pay to Gross Wages as follows:

Net Pay:                          $550.00
Social Security Tax:      $43.48
Medicare Tax:                $10.17
Federal Income Tax:     $67.20
State Income Tax:          $29.90
State Disability Tax:      $0.60

Gross Wages:                   $701.35

This calculation takes seconds to process and immediately the caregiver can see what her gross wages are, what taxes are being withheld and how much she’ll take home. Additionally, the calculator will also show that the family will need to budget for an additional $62.58 in employer taxes each week, which means their budget for hiring the caregiver is really $763.93 each week.

The main point to take away from looking at these numbers is that open communication is extremely important when discussing compensation with a caregiver. When both of you understand the true cost of hiring an employee and what taxes are involved with being an employee, conflicts are less likely to occur and the employment relationship starts off on the right foot.

In an article for Bloomberg, H-1B critic Norman Matloff blames U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, among others for what he calls the demonization of an ethnic group. Sen. Schumer had referred to Indian businesses as “chop shops.” That does not mean, argues Matloff, that he believes the IT industry offshore is in the clear; they often hire cheap labor. But, he says, India does not “abuse” the foreign worker system more than any other country within the technology industry.

If Congress does boost the current H-1B visa cap, as so many hope, there is a concern that U.S. tech workers will be at a greater disadvantage, battling against a theoretically flooded employment market. Lawmakers who oppose a raised cap say they want to protect U.S. high tech workers by restraining visa use by offshore firms.

But others argue that a continued tight cap on the number of H-1B visas as proposed by Sen. Schumer and others is just a way to hobble offshore outsourcing firms.

Outsourcing firms offshore are not required to disclose who makes up their workforce and how many employees are working with a visa status. And if a company is forced to change the percentage of visa-based workers due to an immigration bill, will they then increase their domestic U.S. workers and fill the gap left by the low number of allowed visa holders?

Will visa restrictions or a restriction that bars the largest H-1B employers from sending their visa holders to work at third-party sites push offshore outsourcing businesses to hire more domestic-based employees? There may be business acquisitions which work to increase the U.S. domestic workforce based in offshore firms, or other workarounds which will make the restrictions moot.

Some companies such as IBM may even see gains from these restrictions. IBM continues to be one of the largest IT employers of Indian workers. If visa restrictions simply raise the costs for competitors offshore, U.S.-based companies may grab more of the market –or they may simply expand their own overseas workforces.

A. Banerjee is a Houston immigration attorney in Texas. Before selecting an lawyer, contact the Law Offices of Annie Banerjee by visiting their website at http://www.visatous.com.

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The bill does not allow the outplacement of H-1B visa holders who are more than 15 percent of a U.S. company’s workforce. The proportion of H-1B visas workers as well as L1 visa workers is also limited to 50 percent of a company’s total workforce as of fiscal year 2017, which starts in October of 2016. Large numbers of Indian-based employees are sent by their companies to work at U.S.-based client locations on H-1B or L1 temporary work visas. If the currently-drafted immigration bill is passed, firms in India will be forced to drastically cut down on the number of employees they can send abroad. The cut in workforce will adversely affect both Indian- and U.S.-work sectors. The CEO research director of Offshore Insights, Sudin Apte, estimates that his visa employees make up between 60 and 70 percent of U.S.-sent, offshore workers for the IT research and advisory firm. India-based companies have between 35 and 60 percent of their employees working on H-1B visas, which means the bill will dramatically affect how those firms can distribute their employees for clients.

India-based IT firms will likely have to employee far more U.S. residents, which will increase their own overhead for wages and benefits. Company heads also report that the bill also requires than they pay higher wages to H-1B visa holders and pay more for visa fees overall. Earnings for fiscal year 2017 could be between 60 and 120 basis points lower than previous years, and earnings-per-share could see as much as a 3-to-6 percent dip.

While Indian-based executives state they understand the need for U.S. immigration reform, the H-1B and L1 visa limitations will overwhelmingly affect the Indian ,marketplace like no other country which sends temporary visa workers to the country.

India has the largest applicants of H1B and L1 visas globally and currently has a 55 percent market share of the global IT outsourcing industry. The IT sector makes up approximately 4 percent of India’s GDP and the U.S. makes up close to 60 percent India’s software exports.

A. Banerjee is a Houston immigration attorney in Texas. Before selecting an lawyer, contact the Law Offices of Annie Banerjee by visiting their website at http://www.visatous.com.

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