Just when you thought it was safe to stop talking about unemployment insurance benefits, I’m back. Or as Jack Nicolson says in the “Shining”—“I’m baaaaaaaaaack!” We forget to mention a few of our odds and ends U.S. territories, Districts of Columbia and other areas of the United States that also have employers, a U.S.-based employment labor law system, and plenty of employees to make this system a living breathing part of an employer’s everyday life.
As for one of these so called U.S. territories, the U.S. Virgin Islands, employers on this tropical paradise have to follow the rules of an unemployment insurance system as would many of their counterparts in the continental United States. That means that any employer, for instance, who employers someone in the Virgin Islands must keep records on how much that employee works, how much they earn for that time, and so on—for at least the last five years that the employee has worked for you.
Not only that, employers must be willing to open up many other parts of the personnel records and business records if asked by the Virgin Islands employment authorities. So employers in the Virgin Islands—like every other employer we’ve met so far—is well-motivated to keep very accurate and up to date records on their employees, whether that be their exit interview forms, their resumes, their employment applications, their absence reports, what have you.
And continuing along, as with other employers stateside, employers in the Virgin Islands have to report themselves to the Virgin Island unemployment insurance system as soon as they are up and running. The reason—so the authorities can determine what your tax status will be. If you are found liable, they will then open an account for you and expect quarterly reports from you on employee wages.
