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Diana Runner
O n November 5, President George Bush signed into law the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-508), which contained amendments to the Federal Unemployment Tax Act. These included extending the 0.2-percent temporary tax, which was assessed under the Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 1976 (P.L. 94-566), for 5 additional years through December 31, 1995. The maximum State employer tax offset credit against the Federal tax liability remains at 5.4 percent. The net Federal tax, which is the employer's residual Federal obligation to the program after the tax offset credit has been applied, remains at 0.8 percent. The legislation also deleted the 35-year limitation on the expenditure of the 1956, 1957, and 1958 distributions of funds allocated to the States under the 1954 Reed Act for administrative purposes.1 Therefore, the funds can be drawn on by the States to meet administrative costs in perpetuity.
In general, State legislatures made very few changes in the unemployment insurance laws during 1990. Six States-Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, and Virginia-increased their maximum weekly benefit amounts, and two States-Alaska and Virginia-increased their minimum weekly benefit amounts. Three States-Arizona, Minnesota, and South Dakota-changed the amount of earnings to be disregarded when computing the weekly benefit for partial benefits.
This excerpt is from an article published in the January 1991 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
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Footnotes
1 By the terms of the Reed Act, funds in excess of the
legal maximum in the Federal Unemployment Account are distributed
to the States to be used for administrative costs.
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