Many employees fear that if they owe money to a third party, that their employer can withhold salary owed them and forward the withheld sum to the third party.
Well, I have some good news for those employees, and this isn’t something new, An employer can only withhold payroll from an employee according to explicit instructions via a court order.
Not only that, but many times an employer will deduct payroll from an employee for various reasons: damage caused to equipment, merchandise, fines, charges for lost or stolen items that were in the employee’s care/possesion.
These deductions are also illegal.
The only way an employer can deduct money from an employee’s payroll is with prior written consent.
A few examples of this are:
Purchases of merchandise from the company or company outlet store.
Fee for issue of replacement for lost swipe card (usually this is in the contract or on a company policy directive that the employee signs prior to starting work)
requests by the employee to deduct sums from his payroll towards private savings plans (thereby earning him extra tax deductions)
Note: even when a court order from garnished wages is presented to the employer, there are amounts that are exempt from this, by law. see the full list of exempt sums here:
http://www.payrollisrael.com/node/107
Moshe Egel-Tal, CSPP
Founder and CEO, Israpay "making payroll simple"
Site: http://www.israpay.com
Email: mo***********@gm***.com
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