New hire reporting

What gets reported

A new-hire report goes to the state where the new employee will work. It contains the employee's name, address, and Social Security number; the employer's name, address, and federal EIN; and the hire date. Some states require additional fields — state of hire, occupational title, expected income — and we include those where the state requires them.

Federal mandate, state administration

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 is the federal law that created the requirement. Each state administers its own new-hire registry, with its own submission deadline (most are within 20 days; some are shorter), its own electronic format, and its own designated state agency that receives the file.

When an employer has employees in more than one state, the multi-state employer rule lets the employer pick one state to report all new hires to instead of reporting state by state. The choice has to be registered with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and applies to electronic filers only.

How Payrollix handles it

Adding an employee in Payrollix and setting their hire date prepares the new-hire report for that employee's work state. The required data — name, address, SSN, hire date, and the employer information — is captured automatically from the employee and client records. Where Payrollix is registered as a reporter with the state's registry, the submission happens directly; in states where direct submission is not yet wired, the prepared report is on the client record and we coordinate the submission through the appropriate channel within the deadline window.

Corrections to an employee's hire date or work state, or a hire that is reversed, produce an appropriate update or rescission on the registry side. You do not need to track which reports went where — the status and acknowledgment are visible on the employee record.