SYRACUSE — An increasing number of foreign nationals are coming to the United States for jobs these days, and that means employers hiring them need to be on top of the regulations and paperwork required for such employment.

That’s why Syracuse–based law firm Mackenzie Hughes LLP recently formed a practice group specifically dedicated to immigration and labor practice. The group is headed up by Ramon Rivera.

“We saw that our clients are becoming more involved in the global marketplace by hiring foreign nationals,” Rivera says. In the Syracuse area, there is evidence of this at the Syracuse VA Medical Center, which employs foreign doctors; Syracuse University, which hires teachers from overseas; and the pharmaceutical industry, which employs international engineers, he says.

Employers must consider numerous issues and properly document them when hiring foreign nationals, Rivera says, and that is where Mackenzie Hughes’ new practice group can help.

Compliance issues are different than when a company hires a U.S. citizen, Rivera explains. When hiring foreign nationals, a company must document the position the person is hired for as well as the salary paid, and then must not veer from that, he says. That means if a company hires a foreign national as an engineer, they cannot have that person performing other job duties unless it amends the paperwork to note this. It also means that foreign nationals must be paid the prevailing wage for their work.

This is done, Rivera says, to protect both foreign nationals and U.S. workers. This measure ensures that foreign nationals are not underpaid for their work and it also ensures they aren’t overpaid and therefore depriving U.S. workers of wages.

“Some employers are not aware of this,” Rivera notes of the compliance requirements. “The fines and penalties can be substantial,” for businesses that don’t comply, he adds.

Avoiding the issue isn’t as simple as refusing to hire foreign nationals, Rivera cautions. Companies also face consequences if they discriminate against international job applicants.

Rivera says the firm was seeing clients facing a number of issues concerning international workers — enough that it made sense to form the practice group to serve those needs specifically.

“Syracuse is a smaller market, but we are becoming members of the global marketplace,” he says.

The Mackenzie Hughes immigration and labor practice group includes five other attorneys who also have experience in other areas such as business and litigation. Those attorneys are Jeffrey Brown, Mary Anne Cody, Christian Jones, Jacqueline Jones, and Michael Stanczyk.

As head of the practice group, Rivera brings a great deal of experience to the table. With Mackenzie Hughes since 2001, Rivera has handled immigration and naturalization law for the firm. Prior to joining the firm, he was managing partner at Micale & Rivera, LLP, and a solo practitioner at Rivera Law Firm, where he also focused on immigration-related issues.

Rivera also served as an adjunct professor at Syracuse University, where he taught immigration law and policy.

Headquartered at 101 S. Salina St., Mackenzie Hughes (www.mackenziehughes.com) has about 35 lawyers on staff and works with clients such as the city of Syracuse, Cazenovia College, Empower Federal Credit Union, and O’Brien & Gere. The law firm’s practice areas include business, litigation, trusts and estates, commercial insurance, financial, municipal, labor disputes, immigration, and environmental law.

Contact The Business Journal at news@cnybj.com

Americans’ confidence in their ability to afford a comfortable retirement has recovered somewhat from the record lows of the past five years.

That’s according to the 24th annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) that the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) released on March 18.

However, it doesn’t appear the findings are the result of improved retirement preparations and those with confidence may be limited to people who are enrolled in retirement plans, EBRI said.

The RCS, the longest-running survey of its kind in the nation, finds that the percentage of workers confident about having enough money for a comfortable retirement increased in 2014.

The percentage had hit record lows between 2009 and 2013, EBRI said.

The survey found 18 percent are currently very confident of having a comfortable retirement, which is up from 13 percent in 2013. At the same time, 37 percent are somewhat confident.

Additionally, 24 percent are not at all confident, which is statistically unchanged from 28 percent in 2013, according to EBRI.

That increase in confidence “was isolated almost exclusively” to people who had a retirement plan like a 401(k), says Nevin Adams, the survey’s co-author. 

And it could be either through respondents’ workplaces or an individual-retirement account, he adds.

“When we looked at the people who didn’t have a retirement-savings account and compared those results to last year, there is basically no upward movement at all in their confidence,” says Adams.

Nearly half of workers without a retirement plan were not at all confident about their financial security in retirement, compared with only about 1 in 10 with a plan, according to EBRI.

The increase in confidence between 2013 and 2014 occurred primarily among those contributing to a plan.

Respondents who were very confident rose to 24 percent in 2014, up from 14 percent in the 2013 survey. Those figures compare with level readings among the respondents not contributing to a plan, 9 percent in 2014 down from 10 percent in 2013, EBRI said.

A possible reason for improved confidence is the rising stock market and property values, Jack VanDerhei, EBRI research director, and co-author of the report, said in the news release.

“And it’s entirely possible that people were … reflecting based on the statement they had [received] relative to their retirement savings and, in fact, had seen it rise during the past year,” Adams adds.

He also acknowledges that the authors are only speculating about the reason and don’t know it “with precision.”

The RCS also found retiree confidence in having a financially secure retirement, which historically tends to exceed worker confidence levels, has also increased, with 28 percent very confident (up from 18 percent in 2013) and 17 percent not at all confident (statistically unchanged from 14 percent in 2013).

Nearly two thirds (64 percent) of workers report they or their spouse have saved for retirement (statistically equivalent to 66 percent in 2013), although nearly 8 in 10 (79 percent) of full-time workers say that they or their spouse have done so.

It represents another example in the survey in which participation in a retirement plan mattered: 90 percent of workers enrolled in a retirement plan had saved for retirement, compared with just 1 in 5 of those without a retirement plan.

Cost of living and day-to-day expenses head the list of reasons why workers do not save (or save more) for retirement, with 53 percent of workers citing these factors, EBRI said.

If you ask people why they are not saving more, they tell you basically the day-to-day expenses are “crowding it out,” Adams says.

“They’re having to take care of the here and now, instead of the there and then,” he adds.

Existing debt is clearly an obstacle standing in the way of many needing to save for retirement, and weighing on retirement confidence, according to Matt Greenwald, of Greenwald & Associates, Inc. which conducted and co-sponsored the survey.

“Just 3 percent of workers who describe their debt as a major problem say they are very confident about having enough money to live comfortably throughout retirement, compared with 29 percent of workers who indicate debt is not a problem,” he noted. “Fifty eight percent of workers and 44 percent of retirees say they are having a problem with their level of debt.”

Greenwald & Associates and EBRI, both headquartered in Washington, D.C., conducted the survey in early 2014.

Nearly two dozen organizations underwrote the survey, EBRI said.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

In President Obama’s new budget proposal, he suggested taxing the historically pretax 401(k) contributions of about half a million people.

Some business owners are reticent to start defined-contribution plans for their employees because of this proposal. But the president’s hope to restrict the plans should actually make owners more interested in creating one.

Obama’s suggested changes have zero chance of congressional approval. Regardless of these proposals, a sponsored retirement plan offers small-business owners a rare opportunity to reduce their unfair tax burden.

Under U.S. tax law, the entire tax burden of a small business flows directly onto the personal tax return of the owner. Profit is taxed immediately in the year it is earned. It takes between five and 40 years to fully amortize the deductions for capital expenditures. Most business owners need a tax preparer to assemble the binder-sized stack of tax forms required to comply fully with the law.

Under such a heavy tax load, owners need a way to fund their personal retirement, so their corporate finances do not burden it.

Fortunately, small-business owners can sponsor a 401(k) for all their employees, including themselves. This year such a plan allows everyone to contribute $17,500 toward their retirement without it being taxed ($23,000 for those over 50).

Employers often offer to match the first 5 percent of a worker’s salary with an additional 4 percent, encouraging saving at least 9 percent of before-tax salary. This brings workers very close to our recommendation of saving 15 percent of their after-tax standard of living.

Employers can also give employees a portion of their salary as an end-of-year bonus directly into the 401(k).

Including employee contributions as well as employer matches and bonuses, the 2014 maximum total contribution is $52,000 ($57,500 for those over age 50). These limits rise each year with inflation.

Obama’s proposal targets the 401(k) contributions of anyone already burdened with a marginal tax rate in excess of 28 percent. Thus, small-business owners or employees with a top marginal tax rate of 33 percent, 35 percent, or 39.6 percent would have to pay the 5 percent, 7 percent, or 11.6 percent tax on the contribution. Then they would have to pay their full income tax again on both the contribution and the growth when withdrawing the money.

All of this is done to solve the so-called revenue problem of the federal government. No acknowledgment is made that bureaucrats are collecting the same percentage of national income (revenue hasn’t changed as a percentage of gross domestic product) and what we really have is a spending problem.

If Obama truly wanted to solve the problem via retirement accounts, he should look to his own employees. Collecting an extra 11.6 percent in revenue on private-sector contributions pales in comparison to the 100 percent expenditure saved by reducing lavish government pensions.

Furthermore, Obama proposed a tax on private sector 401(k) contributions but put no such burden on the federal government’s analogous 457(b) plan contributions. Why let the political class grow richer by exclusively targeting the private sector?

However, Obama’s current proposal only targets traditional 401(k)s, which only adds to the many reasons to prefer funding a Roth 401(k).

First, in the unlikely event that the president’s proposal does pass, money currently in retirement accounts will probably be grandfathered. Therefore getting as much as possible into a Roth account now is the best tax-planning defense.

Second, because tax is paid on Roth contributions as they are put in, there will be no double taxation when money is removed. Paying the tax on a Roth contribution now would be better than paying some tax now and more tax later.

Finally, even if the president forces people to withdraw any money over some specific limit, money in a Roth account can be taken out tax free. This won’t be true of traditional account balances. They, unfortunately, will be subject to whatever future tax rates Congress imposes.

With 65 percent of workers failing to save at least 15 percent for retirement, it would be easy for Obama’s proposal to gain populist support with vague ideas of the rich paying their ever-increasing supposedly “fair share.” This is inevitable because politicians can only target those who have money and can usually count on the support of those who have chosen not to save.

In the meantime, small-business owners would do well to take advantage of the advice of a financial planner, rather than the president, and create their own low-expense Roth 401(k) option for themselves and their employees.

David John Marotta is president of Marotta Wealth Management, Inc., which provides fee-only financial planning and wealth management. Contact him at emarotta.com or visit www.marottaonmoney.com. Megan Russell studied cognitive science at the University of Virginia and now specializes in explaining the complexities of economics and finance at www.marottaonmoney.com.