Welcome to UI Online, your fast, convenient, and secure way to certify for continuing unemployment
benefits and manage your claim.
In this video, we’ll walk you through the process of reporting Entertainment Industry
Earnings using UI Online. We'll focus on how to answer Question #6 on
the claim certification when certifying for benefits in order to properly report your
entertainment industry earnings for these three common scenarios:
residuals only, residuals and wages, and
multiple residual payments in a week. In addition, if you're self employed, or received
other non-industry payments such as a pension, you'll want to look for our other instructional
videos specific to these situations. In order to certify for continuing benefits
using UI Online, you first need to register in Benefit Programs Online and create a UI
Online account. If you haven’t created an account yet, or
you need information on how to certify, please see our other instructional videos for help
with these topics. Unemployment Insurance benefits are designed
to provide partial wage replacement to unemployed workers, but the entertainment industry has
many additional types of pay. Therefore, it’s important to properly report
all work, wages, and additional income to the EDD to ensure that you receive the benefit
payment that you may be eligible for. Before we talk about how to report residual
pay, let's briefly go over what residual pay is.
Residual pay refers to additional compensation paid to individuals employed in the entertainment
field for the reuse or resale of recorded material,
such as television programs or commercials, films or musical recordings.
Workers in the entertainment industry can receive a variety of payments based on work
performed. These range from regular wages to residuals, royalties, and holding fees.
If you earned regular wages be sure to report them for the week in which they were earned,
not the week they were paid. If you received other types of income such as residuals, royalties,
and holding fees, report these earnings when you receive them in the mail or when delivered
by your designated agent.
Residual payments and holding fees will be allocated to the week in which you “receive”
them. Residuals and holding fees will be considered
as received by you during the FIRST week in which one of the following occurs:
The payment or fee is personally given to you or delivered to your home or mailing address.
You are notified (orally or in writing) by your talent agent, union, etc. that a payment
or fee has been paid to you. The payment or fee is deposited or credited
to your financial institution. The payment or fee is delivered to your business
manager, accountant, or any other person who you have designated to handle your financial
affairs. If the issuer of your payment was a payroll
company, they are considered to be your employer. Use their name and address when reporting
wages or other income to the EDD.
For example, you receive a paycheck from the payroll company, Entertainment Partners, for
your role in the television show, Sunrise Over California.
When reporting your earnings, you would use the name of the payroll company as your last
employer, and not the name of the television show. Make sure to review your check
stub or payment notice to confirm who is your correct last
employer. If you are self-employed or hired as an
independent contractor, you are considered to be the employer.
You will list your name or the name of your business as the employer. For the address
field, indicate your company’s mailing address or home address, if working from home.
How is your benefit payment calculated? The EDD uses the information that you provide
during the certification process to determine the amount and type of income that is deductible
from your Weekly Benefit Amount. When you report earnings, the EDD will use
the criteria shown on this chart to calculate your payment.
Most customers certify for continuing benefits two weeks at a time. If you have multiple
weeks that need to be certified, you'll start with the oldest week first.
You must report your earnings on the certification for the weeks in which the work was performed,
or a residual was received.
Our benefit week is usually Sunday through Saturday, so you must report the earnings
during that week only. For example, on August 7th you received a
residual payment of $30 and had regular earnings of $100 for that week.
On August 10th you received another residual payment of $27, and had regular earnings of
$50 for that week. In this example, the regular earnings will
be reported before the residuals for each week.
The $30 residual payment and $100 of regular earnings would be reported on the claim certification
for the first week, and the $27 residual payment and $50 of regular earnings would be reported
on the claim certification for the second week.
Now that you understand a little bit more about how to report your earnings, let's walk
through how to enter this information using UI Online.
When answering the certification questions and you only need to report residual pay,
you must answer "No" for Question #6, so you can be taken to the screen to report your
residual pay. In this example, we'll show you how to properly
report residual pay in the amount of $300 received on August 3rd, for Week 1, August
2nd through August 8th. You will be directed to the clarification
screen with an additional question that asks if you received any other type of income.
This screen provides a list of other types of income that must be reported.
Since Residual Pay is included in the list, select "Yes" and then select "Next."
After selecting "Next" you'll then be presented with these additional questions and will need
to provide a narrative description of the type of income
you received. Answering these questions will help the EDD
determine whether or not the income you received is deductible
from your weekly benefit payment. Please note, individual residual amounts of
$25 or greater should be entered on separate screens. Amounts less than $25 should be added
together and reported on one screen. From the drop-down menu select "Residual Pay
or Holding Fees." If you do not see the other income type you
earned listed, select “Not Listed” from the drop-down menu and provide a description
of the other income type received. In this example, enter $300 for the amount.
Since residual pay is allocated to the week in which you receive the payment, enter the
date you received the check under the "Date Received" field.
In this example, the date received is August 3rd, 2015.
If you work in the entertainment industry and the payment was issued by a payroll company,
they are considered to be your employer. Use the payroll company name and address when
reporting wages and other income to the EDD. In this example, the employer name is Talented
Musicians, Inc. Under "Other Income Details," you can provide
a brief explanation of why you received the income, such as:
"Residual pay for song released many years ago."
The next question asks if there are additional other types of income to report for this week.
If you have additional residuals to report, select "Yes," otherwise, for this example,
we will select "No." After completing this screen, select "Next"
to continue. Now we will show an example of how to report
residual pay with regular wages. On the Certification Questions screen, since
you received regular wages, you must select "Yes" to Question #6.
This will allow you to report the employer details for the regular wages and will also
allow you to report the residual pay. After answering all of the certification questions,
select "Next" to continue. On the next screen, you'll then be presented
with the two clarifying questions that ask about the type of income you received.
Answer "Yes" to both questions and select "Next" to continue.
When you select "Yes" to the previous question that asked, “Did you work this week?”
you'll be asked additional questions on the "Work Details" screen, as shown here.
Complete the required fields indicated with an asterisk (*).
In this example, we will demonstrate how to properly report regular earnings
in the gross amount (before taxes are deducted) of $120 for a total of 12 hours worked.
To begin, enter your employer name and address. Remember to enter the employer name and address
of record that appears on your paycheck stub or payment notice, and not the production
you are working for. For example, if you were taping for the television
show, "The Sound," you would enter Talent Partners if that is their employer of record
on the paycheck stub or payment notice. Next, enter the last day you worked for the
employer during the week shown above. Next you'll enter your wage information.
For Week 1, you report that you worked 12 hours during the week.
If you get paid at an hourly rate and need to calculate your earnings, multiply the number
of hours you worked during the week by your hourly rate of pay.
Assuming you get paid at an hourly rate of $10, you would report $120 of gross earnings
for this week. Even if you didn’t get paid until later,
be sure to accurately report all earnings during your weekly claim certification;
even those from part-time or temporary work.
Next, select your Wage Type. The most common wage type is: Regular Earnings
including In-Home Support Services.
These are wages paid by your employer for your services performed while working.
It can include being paid a salary or at an hourly rate.
Next, select your employer type. The most common employer type is a Private Sector Employer.
Next, answer the question, "Are you still going to work for this employer?"
Answer yes if you are not laid off. Answer no if the assignment is complete, even
if you may return to them in the future. This question is about if you are still working
for them ongoing at this time. For this example, we'll answer "No" to this
question. The next question asks, "What is your employment
status?" In this example you'll report "Laid off due to a lack of work."
In the "Provide more details" field, enter additional details about your employment status.
For example, "6 hours worked on Sunday, 6 hours worked on Saturday."
If you reported self-employment wages, answer this question to indicate whether or not you
would have been willing to stop your self-employment in order to accept full-time work during the
week. Skip this question if you did not report any
self-employment. In this example, this box is left unchecked
since you are not working full-time and would like to continue to receive benefits.
Next, select "Yes" or "No" to answer the question, "Do you have any additional employers to report
for this week?" For example, if you worked for more than one
employer during this week you should answer "Yes" so you can be taken to a similar screen
to record the information about the additional employer and wages.
Those earnings will need to be reported separately by completing this screen again.
Once finished reporting your regular wages, select the "Next" button to continue.
After selecting "Next" you'll be presented with the additional questions that will allow
you to report the residual pay you received for this same week.
Fill out the screen in the same manner that we previously showed.
You can still modify or delete each entry before selecting "Next."
If there are no additional other types of income to report for this week, answer the
last question with "No" and select "Next" to continue.
Let's now consider an example of when you have more than one residual to report for
the same week and the amount of each residual is more than $25.
If you have more than one residual to report where the amounts are greater than $25 for
the same week, select "Yes" when you get to the question,
"Do you have any additional other types of income to report for this week?
And select the "Next" button. The screen will refresh and new fields will
appear that will enable you to enter the additional residual payment information for the same
week. The information you previously entered will
be saved and will appear in a table at the top of the page.
Continue entering the information for your other residual payment.
You can report up to 10 additional other types of income a week.
Remember, only individual residual amounts of $25 or greater should be entered on separate
screens. Residual amounts of less than $25 should be
added together and reported on one screen. When you are finished entering all your residual
information, select "No" for the question, "Do you have any additional other types of
income to report for this week?" and then select "Next" to continue.
You’re almost done. Once you have answered all the certification questions, it’s time
to review your answers for accuracy.
Please read the Acknowledgement section below. If everything is correct, select the Acknowledgement
check box at the bottom of the page, and enter your ZIP code.
If you need to make changes to any of the answers, simply select the “Previous”
button to go back to any of the previous screens. When you are ready, select “Submit." Selecting
“Submit” finalizes and completes the certification process for those weeks.
That's it. You're done. You have successfully submitted your certification to the EDD when
you see this screen with your confirmation number.
You should save this number for your reference or select the “Confirmation” link to print
a copy for your records. If you have additional weeks that are available
to be certified, click the “Return to Certify for Benefits” button to repeat the process.
If you feel that you have reported incorrect information on the claim certification, just
send a message to the EDD through your UI Online account by selecting the “Contact
Us” link at the top of the screen. Be sure to specify the week, amount reported,
and correct amount. We hope you have found this video helpful
on how to properly report your residual payments in a fast, convenient and secure way online.
Additional information about this topic is available on our EDD website.
We also invite you to view other instructional videos available to learn more about the many
different benefits and conveniences of using UI Online.