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Inflated Late Pay Check

Interesting shailo in ribis

A company owed someone his pay check for last month, came the time to pay and the company ran into some financial difficulties. The pay check ended up coming a month late. As an apology to this worker they were mosif a little bit more to the pay check (what amounted to around 10% even.) Is this a shailo at all of ribis? (The company, surprisingly I’d say — this is the interesting part — were mosif the money from themselves. Essentially giving themselves a “kanas”.)

Answer:

This is a case of ribis me’ucheres, in which more is paid back than is owed. It is forbidden by rabbinic enactment (Yoreh De’ah 160:4).

However, the Talmidei Ha-Rashba (cited in Beis Yosef) write that this stringency does not apply to money that is owed by way of a sale, and this ruling is cited by the Rema. The same will apply to money owed for labor.

In addition, several poskim write that the general laws of ribis do not apply to companies. Although we are generally stringent in this matter, this is certainly another reason for leniency in this case.

For these reasons, there is no problem in receiving the inflated pay check.

Best wishes.

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