I have just been informed by my employer that they incorrectly setup my healthcare deductions at the beginning of the year and that I will owe a sum of money to cover these underpayments.

Can they leagally do this? It seems to me that there should be some recourse.

Thx

Yes they can. Did you notice a difference in the health insurance deductions from the previous year?

We had a similar situation at my company. Somehow a couple of employees were not deducted for several months. They didn't report the problem either.

Your employer can certainly do this as you are responsible for checking your paystub for accuracy. They should give you time to pay payback the amount owed though.

I would agree under certain questions they should be able to answer. I am asuming you are not a new employee. They should be able to show you what they paid out for your plan and be able to show other employees with the same plan paying a higher amount.

The problem I have with this is that this was a completely new healthcare program based on the company splitting off from another parent company so I would not have seen a difference. I completely agree it is up to the individual to monitor and bring up obvious errors.
The HR department has admitted that they iput the information incorrectly and that this was the cause of the under funded account balance and now they are going to bill the employees for this difference. Not quite sure if this will be done over time or not but if I were to leave the company I'm certain they would deduct this from my last check or something like that.

Thx for the replies.

That's a bummer. But they can legally collect it.