Prepared by the Quality Reporting Service Center - (312) 751-4992 - QRSC@RRB.GOV 

Please share this information with the appropriate members of your staff who file the following reports, as well as programming staff who support these functions.

• Form BA-3a/d, Annual Report of Creditable Compensation
• Form BA-4, Report of Creditable Compensation Adjustments
• Form BA-6a, Form BA-6 Address Report
• *Form BA-9, Report of Separation Allowance or Severance Pay
• Form BA-10, Report of Miscellaneous Compensation and Sick Pay
• *Form BA-11, Report of Gross Earnings
• Form GL-99, Deemed Service Month Questionnaire
• Form UI-41a, Supplemental Report of Compensation

Purpose

The purpose of this letter is to provide information regarding the planned format and content changes for the forms/reports listed above and the date for implementing the changes. Our Program Letters No. 05-03 and No. 05-06, dated December 10, 2004 and March 29, 2005, respectively, provide details for revisions to most of the forms. This letter provides details for the forms highlighted with an asterisk (*).

Expanded Compensation Amounts

• Form BA-9, Report of Separation Allowance or Severance Pay
  
  Tier II earnings based elements are being expanded in all RRB programs and processes to be consistent with changes being made for Tier I based elements, which will require an additional digit within the next few years. The Tier II elements to be expanded on Form BA-9 are the Taxable Compensation and the Creditable Compensation amounts which are used to calculate a special benefit called the Separation Allowance Lump-Sum Amount (SALSA).

Name and Date Formats

• Form BA-9, Report of Separation Allowance or Severance Pay
• Form BA-11, Report of Gross Earnings
  
  For consistency of RRB and employer report processes, all reported names are being expanded; and all date fields are being converted to use a four-digit year. The first and last names will allow for 15 and 20 characters, respectively. Years will be represented in the CCYY format; complete dates will be represented in the MMDDCCYY format. (See Attachments 1 and 2 for the new tape layouts for these reports.)

Obsolescence of Forms/Reports

• Form BA-3a, Annual Report of Creditable Compensation
• Form BA-3d, Annual Report of Creditable Compensation; Miscellaneous Compensation and Sick Pay
• Form BA-10, Report of Miscellaneous Compensation and Sick Pay
  
  Because the new Form BA-3, Annual Report of Creditable Compensation will be used to report regular service and compensation as well as miscellaneous compensation and sick pay (See Program Letter 05-03.), the forms now used for theses purposes will no longer be needed. Forms BA-3a, BA-3d and BA-10 will become obsolete.

Scheduled Implementation

To allow employers ample time to make these changes, we released our previous letters prior to establishing a final implementation date. We have now set January 2008 for implementation of the changes. This means that earnings and address reports for the 2007 earnings year must be reported in the new formats or using revised forms, which will be made available by the fall of 2007. As previously noted, some of the changes are optional; others are mandatory. Please review our previous letters for these details. You may also use Attachment 3 as a reference.

Additional Information or Assistance

You may obtain copies of Program Letters 05-03 and 05-06 at the RRB website, www.rrb.gov. You may also contact the Quality Reporting Service Center for the letters or to ask questions about the new reports. The email address and telephone number are shown at the top of this page. The RRB is planning a National Employer Training Seminar in Chicago in May 2006 and these changes will be presented at a breakout session.

Attachments
Attachment 1 provides the new BA-9 file layout.
Attachment 2 provides the new BA-11 file layout.
Attachment 3 lists the changes to forms/reports to be implemented in January 2008.