Small business owners have an important opportunity to comment on proposed rules that will be used to implement the Paid Family & Medical Leave (PFML) law. A new wage and payroll tax on employees and employers takes effect in January 2025. Paid leave benefits for employees takes effect May 2026.

There are several key aspects of the proposed rules that could create significant complication and cost for small businesses.

“Undue Hardship” is a term in the law that is intended to empower employers to work with employees to schedule the taking paid leave (up to 12 weeks annually) to avoid undue hardship “as reasonably determined by the employer.”  However, the proposed rules establish a time-consuming and costly procedure for employers to prove reasonableness if challenged by the employee.  The proposed rules undercut and potentially negate the intended workforce scheduling protection intended by the PFML law.  NFIB intends to strongly object and propose an alternative approach.

Counting employees to determine whether a business falls below the 15-employee threshold for paying half or all of the taxes is another key problem area.  The proposed rules would have the business workforce size determined by the level of the employment October 1 of each year.  This would conflict with existing Maine labor laws and create confusion and complication.  NFIB intends to strongly object and propose consistency existing with existing state law.

There are numerous other areas of the proposed rules that are important to small business owners.

NFIB will be send members an alert with details about all of the concerns and instructions on what you can do to help support reasonable changes that work for small employers.

The proposed rules can be found on the Maine Labor Department website.

www.maine.gov/labor/rulemaking/