Thursday, December 29th, 2022

Be Competitive With Holidays

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

This time of year, there is always talk about holidays. “We get Christmas Eve off.” “We only get a half day on Christmas Eve.” Those kinds of comments flow among your workforce and their friends and relatives.

Are you competitive when it comes to holidays for your employees? There was a recent discussion on the CPAFMA discussion board. By the way, it is worth your membership fee to get access to the discussion board. Some firms reported offering as few as seven paid holidays. I recommend that you provide nine or ten, and several firms do provide that many.

Of course, religious holidays make a difference in some firms, as do state observances.

Here’s a standard 10-day holiday menu offered by CPA firms:

  • January 1 – New Year’s Day
  • The first Friday after April 15th – Tax Holiday
  • May – Memorial Day
  • July – Independence Day
  • September – Labor Day
  • November – Thanksgiving
  • November – The day after Thanksgiving
  • December – Christmas Eve
  • December – Christmas Day
  • Floating – The birthday of the employee or other reason

We all know and have complained about how many holidays Federal employees receive, probably because we don’t get mail on those days. Here’s the Federal holiday listing for 2023. Notice they don’t get the day after Thanksgiving, nor Christmas Eve.

Monday, January 02 * New Year’s Day
Monday, January 16 Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, February 20  Washington’s Birthday
Monday, May 29 Memorial Day
Monday, June 19 Juneteenth National Independence Day
Tuesday, July 04 Independence Day
Monday, September 04 Labor Day
Monday, October 09 Columbus Day
Friday, November 10 * Veterans Day
Thursday, November 23 Thanksgiving Day
Monday, December 25 Christmas Day
If a holiday falls on a Saturday, for most Federal employees, the preceding Friday will be treated as a holiday for pay and leave purposes. If a holiday falls on a Sunday, for most Federal employees, the following Monday will be treated as a holiday for pay and leave purposes.

I have observed that no matter how generous with holidays and PTO you are with your employees, in a CPA firm, the work always has to get done – and it does.

Enjoy the long New Year’s holiday weekend – Happy New Year!

  • "You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights."
  • Maya Angelou

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