Is my husband’s company illegally issuing/taxing his bonuses?

Location: Michigan, U.S.A

My husband works for an outdoor service company that provides almost anything/everything related to outdoor work. They’ve grown so large over the last ten years that they’ve divided the company into different divisions, including a landscape side, a fertilizer/pesticide side, and a mowing side. My husband works for the landscape division.

When they give specific jobs to him, he is given a time frame that the job is supposed to be finished in. If he completes the job under that time frame, at the beginning of each month he is given a bonus of $5/each man hour he came in under the given man hours. Which is the way we have thought everyone was paid.

The issue we have on the bonuses he receives is: they give him the bonus in cash. The following check after he receives this cash, it is listed as a bonus on that check, they tax the entire check as a whole, (his hourlies, plus the bonus) and then take the bonus money back as a “cash bonus recovery”. But this always places him in a higher tax bracket, which takes substantially more taxes. He has received 40 hour checks that only amount to $200-$300 because of this taxing.

My second issue, is while talking to a coworker in the mow division, he mentioned his irritation of how they do this, and the mow employee expressed that, that was weird because they are not taxed at all on their bonuses, the bonuses are not even listed on their check. So the company is not taxing their bonuses what so ever, they’re just handed cash and off they go. While my husband’s bonus is taxed higher than regular wages because it’s a “bonus”.

They’ve been doing this for 4 years.

Should I contact a wage/labor lawyer about this? Or the Better Business Bureau or something along those lines? Or is this normal practice, and there’s no leg to stand on?

I really feel in my heart of hearts that this is very illegal. Would we be entitled to any compensation of this taxation method? I can provide a screenshot of his breakdown of his paychecks that show they add the wage to his check, tax it, and then take it back. Thank you for listening.