I will have no issue paying them back the money owed but for me its more the principle of the matter and knowing my law as an employee. If an employee wants to pay the money back they are only resposible for thier part and do not have to pay taxes back on that money. That information I posted was refered to me by a friend who has a degree in business law in California. She also told me that a comany has only one pay period to recoop the money then after that they are out of luck.

Tomas, you may find that you are confusing "wages paid" with "funds mistakenly supplied".
Although I would doubt that it would be considered your responsibility to inform the company, usually in legal terms, the word "wages" refers _earned_ or contractually obligated payments.
An honest mistake is usually allowed to be fixed.

After some research I can pretty much tell my company to go pound sand and they cant fire me for it.


They cannot garnish your next paychecks as it is against California law, advise them in writing the CA labor law. They could get the money back but they would go to court, unless you signed an authorization prior.

11.2 Employer May Not Collect Or Receive Wages Paid Employee. Labor Code § 221 prohibits an employer from recovering wages paid. This provision prohibits an employer from receiving from an employee any wage paid by the employer to the employee either by deduction or recovery after payment of the wage. "It shall be unlawful for any employer to collect or receive from an employee any part of wages theretofore paid by said employer to said employee."

11.2.1 The California courts have held that Section 221 is "declarative of a strong public policy against fraud and deceit in the employment relationship. Even where fraud is not involved, however, the Legislature ha s recognized the employee's dependence on wages for the necessities of life and has, consequently, disapproved of unanticipated or unpredictab le deductions because they impose a special hardship on employees." (Hudgins v. Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. (1995) 34 Cal.App.4th 1109, 1118-1119)

An employer can lawfully withhold amounts from an employee's wages only: (1) when required or empowered to do so by state or federal law, or (2) when a deduction is expressly authorized in writing by the employee to cover insurance premiums, benefit plan contributions or other deductions not amounting to a rebate on the employee's wages, or (3) when a deduction to cover health, welfare, or pension contributions is expressly authorized by a wage or collective bargaining agreement. Labor Code Sections 221 and 224.

Although a wage garnishment is a lawful deduction from wages under Labor Code section 224, an employer cannot discharge an employee because a garnishment of wages has been threatened or if the employee's wages have been subjected to a garnishment for the payment of one judgment.

I bet if they do figure it out, they will deduct what they overpaid you from future paychecks.

I have thought of doing that but I might just wait and see if they figure it out.

When my van got stolen they over paid me $15,000 for what I had on my tool list. I informed them of this and I got the "oh we would have figured it out anyways" but thier attitude was horrible about it, like I was being an inconvience on them for pointing this out. Thats why I am just waitng to see if they notice or not. My company is not the best to work for but it is not the worst either in forms of attitude, but close.

while I can not answer for California, I would say that if you are overpaid, the honest thing to do would be to bring it to your supervisors attention, (and thank them for the extra money), and let the management decide how to correct the mistake