We have always paid the stipend but with a dedicated car, gym membership, 2 extra weeks of vacation and bonuses. We've never rematched and always have lots of candidates to choose from.

Anonymous wrote:We have multiple kids, so in the past couple of years, we’ve had to pay over stipend and advertise it to even get an au pair to talk to us. With all the new laws on paying au pairs minimum wage going into affect, and room and board not being much of a deduction from that, I would definitely pay minimum wage at least - since they can later ask for back pay.

They have protected families from having to pay back pay. I wouldn't worry about that when setting stipend.

Anonymous wrote:We have multiple kids, so in the past couple of years, we’ve had to pay over stipend and advertise it to even get an au pair to talk to us. With all the new laws on paying au pairs minimum wage going into affect, and room and board not being much of a deduction from that, I would definitely pay minimum wage at least - since they can later ask for back pay.

Well, they cannot ask for back pay from HFs. We have only one kid and we pay the stipend for an extraordinaire ($1000 month) and double the education credit ($1000). DC, like NY, does not have a law where APs are considered domestic workers. If we were forced to "pay minimum wage," under court cases we could deduct for car, car insurance, phone, gym, etc. Our understanding is that they will also be updating the amount deductible for room and board with locality considerations at some point.