A new hire report is the notice every employer sends to the state about each new or rehired employee. It is mainly used to find parents who owe child support, and it has a 20-day federal deadline.
| Item | Federal rule |
|---|---|
| Who | Every employer, for every new and rehired employee |
| What | Employee name, address, SSN and first day of work; employer name, address and FEIN |
| When | Within 20 days of hire; some states require it sooner |
| How | On a W-4 form or an equivalent form, to the extent practicable; most states also accept online or file uploads |
| Multistate employers | May designate one state where they have employees and report all new hires there, after notifying the federal government in writing |
States may ask for more than the federal minimum, such as date of birth, salary or whether health insurance is available. Check your state registry’s form.
EZTime digital HR forms let you send, sign and file employee documents online.
A staffing company has employees in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. It designates Texas as its single reporting state and notifies the Secretary of Health and Human Services in writing, as the statute requires. From then on, it reports all new hires to Texas, including a worker hired for a job in Louisiana.
In March it rehires 12 seasonal workers who left in November. Each rehire is reported again, within 20 days, because the law covers rehires as well as new hires. The company builds the report from the same fields it collects at onboarding, so the submission takes minutes rather than a separate data entry.
The easiest way to meet the deadline is to make the report a step of onboarding rather than a separate task. The data comes from the W-4 and the new hire forms the employee already completes, and the date of first work comes from the first clock-in. Set a weekly routine, for example every Friday, to submit all hires from the week, which keeps every report well within 20 days.
Keep the confirmation from the state registry with the hiring records. If a state asks later whether a person was reported, the confirmation answers it in seconds. For rehires, use the same weekly routine, since the requirement covers people who return as well as first-time hires.
A restaurant group’s office manager goes on leave for three weeks, and nobody submits new hire reports. When she returns, 11 new hires have gone unreported, 4 of them past 20 days.
She submits all 11 immediately and adds the weekly submission to a shared task with a named backup. The next time she is away, the backup files the reports on schedule, and the group checks once a month that every hire in the payroll system has a matching registry confirmation.
Mainly to help states find parents who owe child support so that income withholding orders can be sent to the new employer.
Within 20 days of hire under federal law. Some states require it sooner.
Yes. The reporting requirement covers both new hires and rehires.
The federal requirement covers employees. Some states also require reporting certain independent contractors, so check your state registry.
The federal rule uses the date the employee first performed services for pay. Your state’s form may also ask for a hire date.
Most states accept online entry or file uploads. Check your state registry for the methods it accepts.
Send digital HR forms for e-signature before day one, and keep every signed document in the employee’s digital file.