Human Resource New Hire Reporting in Iowa

December 13th, 2006 Posted by Mark

In the state of Iowa, employers have 15 days from the hire date of the employee to report them as new hires to the state Centralized Employee Registry. This massive computer databases holds information on all the new hires and re-hires in the entire state of Iowa, for both employers and contractors.

If employers are reporting their new hire data to the state Centralized Employee Registry through the use of magnetic tape or through the Internet, then you can send them in lump groups. But the transmissions can’t be more than 16 days apart, as well as not closer than 12 days apart.

When it comes to contractors, as I said, the 15 day window applies under the Iowa labor law. But two conditions have to be met before contractors have to be reported on, and have to do the reporting, to the Centralized Employee Registry. Those two conditions are, one, that the contractor’s payment occurs more than once a year as per the contract between you and the contractor; and, two, that the single payment from this contract has to be more than $600, which is the minimum sum that can be reported on a 1099-MISC tax filing.

The contractor has to also be 18 years of age to count under this labor law, they must perform their particular form of labor in the state of Iowa, must not already be paying child support through your payroll, who is filing income tax statements to the federal government using a 1099-MISC, and who is on their own working as an individual, not as a company, partnership, LLC, etc.

Once you work with a contractor, they meet these above requirements, you report them as a “new hire,” then you never have to go through the process again when you work with them a second, third, fourth time.