There are 3 women, including myself, who work at a CPA firm in California. We have all been asked to come in on Saturday's to work at least 5 hours overtime. Other than this, we've also stayed a couple of hours estra during the week. My question is the following: if we're all salary employees (who are not accountants but rather work on tax and office tasks), do we still not qualify for an overtime rate of 1 1/2? We've been getting paid for overtime at our regular hour rate. I spoke with our payroll person but he says we don't qualify for this 1 1/2 overtime since we're all salary employees. I just want to make sure this is so. Thank you.

Salaried is only a pay method and means nothing in and of itself. What matters is if you are exempt or non-exempt, which is established by your job duties.

wow, you are fast. OK! Great, thank you. Do you by any chance know where I could find details on who is exempt and non-exempt?

Yes. You could get an opinion here if you provided us with some information about your job. Otherwise, you can try the DOL website.

Exempt-from-overtime is a function of the exact job duties (not the title). Given you are working for a CPA firm, we are talking about (maybe) on of the White Collar exceptions. (http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/main.htm)

http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_OvertimeExemptions.htm

Your payroll person making a truly not-smart comment like "salaried employees do not get paid overtime" does not give much confidence to how you are being handled.

Do you make at least $640/week? If not, you cannot be legally Exempt Salaried in CA. Even if you are paid that much, there are still duties tests to look at.

ok, great. well, i basically do various quickbook entries, preparation of 1099 and payroll tax returns, type up correspondence, efiling, prepare deposits, basic bookkeeping, office duties such as phones, faxes, scanning, making copies, preparing our monthly bills for our clients etc.

the receptionist does the typical receptionist duties plus collating of every tax return forms that we do here

the other girl does light bookkeeping for clients and our office, kitchen clean-up, creating excel schedules, answer phones, and collates tax returns

hope this helps! and once again, thank you.

I vote for non-exempt, which would mean that you DO qualify for overtime.

ok, i did my research on the link given above, and yes, i think we are non-exempt! that is great news! now to get courage to speak to my boss and payroll person. It's intimidating to "correct" them....

another quick question, is it legal for our payroll person to apply overtime hours to sick/vacation time? because if we work under 5 hours of overtime, he applies it to that and I don't like it nor do I think it's legal. Any advise?

No, it's not legal.

...just what I thought. Thank you for everything.

Here is the official federal rules:

http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_541/29CFR541.301.htm

541.301(a)(5) Learned professionals.

Accountants. Certified public accountants generally meet the duties requirements for the learned professional exemption. In addition, many other accountants who are not certified public accountants but perform similar job duties may qualify as exempt learned professionals. However, accounting clerks, bookkeepers and other employees who normally perform a great deal of routine work generally will not qualify as exempt professionals.

Of course, the OP never said that the employees in question were CPA's. In fact, their duties are definitely that of nonexempt positions.