Unemployment audit

[Djchanley]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Colorado

Question,

My name is chad hanley and I live in colorado. *My previous employer sent me an email today that the unemployment office audit dept sent a form to them asking them to confirm hours worked and money earned in the first quarter of 2011. In that email, my previous employer sent me, included a photocopied sheet they filled out before they sent it to unemployment office.(basically just letting me know they are providing this info).

I noticed that the income I had claimed and what my Employer claimed was a little off. I claimed I made around 900$ in 3 months or so and I actually made $1500. Reason being, I was providing estimated NET amounts as opposed to the GROSS amounts, unaware I was supposed to give gross amounts. **And I was getting paid bi-weekly and it was difficult to guess what my pay was going to be since I had to make claims every week.

I want to make sure I'm legit and want to be honest with the honest mistake I made. Should I call the unemployment office and tell them, wait to get a letter?
Will I have to payback overpayment? Can I get in legal trouble? *I've never been in any trouble in my life and I lose sleep over things like this.

I'm a very honest person and I'm very nervous about getting in trouble for an small honest mistake.

Any info will help. Thanks for your time

 

[swalsh411]

No need to lose sleep. Pay it back as soon as you can once you receive the overpayment notice. You're not going to jail.

 

[commentator]

The system is doing a cross check for benefit accuracy measurement. Your reportings of your earnings for the weeks you drew partial benefits were off. It says repeatedly in the instructions that you always report your GROSS earnings, after the week you worked them, not the week you were paid for them. This makes it really easy to figure how much you have made in the week you are filing for, since it is your hourly rate times the number of hours you worked, regardless of how your company pays you for the hours, not the estimate of what your net wages will be after take-outs.

The bad news is that you got caught doing it wrong. Whether or not it was intentional is not important. The good news is that you can plead ignorance and get away with it, though you will have an overpayment. They will look at each week, see if you actually made too much to receive benefits or if you received too much money, based on your employer's computations, which are the ones they will believe.

Then you will receive a notice of overpayment. It will be sort of threatening, but it will not be bad for you unless you don't respond. They are much more interested in getting their overpayment back than in prosecuting you. I don't see much point in calling them before you get the notice, unless you just don't want to worry about it and can't wait.(Or unless your contact information has changed since you drew your claim.) They will get to you eventually. But if you decide you do need to call before they send you the overpayment notice, you will need to speak to the fraud and overpayment unit specifically, not just to anyone who happens to take your call. You will be working with these people specifically, and do not want to be misinformed by someone who is new and not sure what they are talking about.

Do answer them quickly when they contact you. Do not ignore the notice. There is not much benefit to appealing the overpayment, as you know you did report your weekly earnings wrong. But do get back with them quickly, 'fess up, plead ignorance of exactly how you were supposed to do it, and hopefully, if you work with them quickly and willingly, you will be able to repay the amount of unemployment benefits you were overpaid and you will not be penalized for it.

With your cooperation, they will set up some sort of overpayment schedule for you. Don't overstate your ability to repay, set up reasonable payments you will be able to make regularly and it will all work out. Whatever you do, do not promise to pay then and then default. Do not set up to pay them $400 a week and then have to miss the payments. They have the ability to garnish wages or even to prosecute you criminally, but they rarely do this unless you ignore them. Don't go out and borrow the whole overpayment amount on a credit card and pay them on the spot, unless you just want to repay this overpayment at a huge high interest rate. The unemployment overpayment unit is a better creditor than many others.

 

[applecruncher]

OP - you should edit your post and remove your real name. It's not necessary and it's not a good idea for many reasons.