Reporting wages and contributions for Tier 2 members
January 31, 2011
You may wish to forward this memorandum to your Information Technology staff, other staff who report
wages and contributions to IMRF, and/or to your payroll service.
Executive Summary
Beginning January 2011, some new employees will be enrolled in IMRF Tier 2 plans. During the enrollment process, Employer Access determines if the employee should be placed in a Tier 2 plan.
Please use the new plan codes when reporting Tier 2 member wages. How these new plan codes will affect you depends on how you prepare your wage report for IMRF:
- If you report 20 or fewer members, IMRF recommends you manually enter wage report information using Employer Access.
- If you report more than 20 members, IMRF recommends you import wage report information into Employer Access using a Microsoft Excel file.
The 80-column text format cannot be used to report wage information for Tier 2 members. The text format will be discontinued. Beginning in July 2012, only Microsoft Excel files can be used to import wage report information.
Dear Authorized Agent:
Beginning January 2011, some new employees will be enrolled in IMRF Tier 2 plans. During the enrollment process, Employer Access determines if the employee should be placed in a Tier 2 plan.
Please use the following new plan codes when preparing your wage report for Tier 2 members:
| Regular Tier 2 | RG03 |
| SLEP Tier 2 | SL03 |
| Revised ECO Regular Tier 2 | EPR3 |
| Revised ECO SLEP Tier 2 | EPS3 |
| Voluntary Additional Tier 2* | VA03 |
*A member may contribute up to an additional 10% of their earnings (up to $106,800 in 2011 for Tier 2 members) to the Voluntary Additional Contribution (VAC) program. If a Tier 2 member enrolls in VAC, those additional contributions are reported as VA03.
How these new plan codes will affect you depends on how you prepare your wage report information for IMRF.
IMRF recommends:
- For employers with 20 or fewer members, manually enter your wage report information using the Display or Edit function of Report Wages in Employer Access. The proper plan will be automatically selected as you enter each members wages.
If you currently use payroll software that creates your wage report information using the 80-column text format, the payroll software will need to change to create a properly formatted Microsoft Excel worksheet. Download the specifications for the Microsoft Excel wage file from the Import Wage Report page in Employer Access and give the specifications to your payroll software company or IT department. - For employers with more than 20 members, use Microsoft Excel to prepare and import wage report information into Employer Access:
- If you import wage report information using Microsoft Excel, IMRF recommends you download a new properly formatted Excel worksheet with the members and plans for your employer from Employer Access.
You can download the worksheet by clicking on the Display or Edit function of Report Wages and then clicking the Send to Excel link before you enter any wages. You will have to enter your password a second time to download the spreadsheet. - If you do not have Microsoft Excel, you can use Open Office Calc to prepare the Excel Worksheet. Open Office Calc is part of the free Open Office software suite. You can download the free Open Office software at http://download.openoffice.org/index.html.
- If you import wage report information using Microsoft Excel, IMRF recommends you download a new properly formatted Excel worksheet with the members and plans for your employer from Employer Access.
Please note: The 80-column text format cannot be used to report wage information for Tier 2 members. The text format is being discontinued
- If you use the 80-column text format, you should replace it with one of the recommended methods listed above for reporting Tier 2 wage information.
- The AERS PC program used to create the 80-column text file was replaced by Employer Access in 2005 and should no longer be used.
- Beginning in July 2012, the 80-column text format will not be accepted by IMRF Employer Access wage reporting.
Not sure what format you use?
Employers who are using the 80-column text format will receive a message when they import that file into the Web Wage Reporting application.
Questions?
If you need assistance during this transition, please send us a secure electronic message or call an IMRF Member Services Representative at 1-800-ASK-IMRF (1-800-275-4673) 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday and ask for the Wage Reports Unit.