New hire compliance checklist

This page is general information, not legal or tax advice. Every statement is attributed to the page it came from and the date we read it; confirm against the current page and with your counsel or payroll advisor before relying on it.

What this page adds

Registering your own employer accounts in a state is covered in the state employer registration checklist, how to register to employ in a new state and what changes when you employ across state lines. This page covers the next step down: what happens per employee, from the signed offer to the first pay cycle. How these steps are run at scale is in employee lifecycle operations.

Form I-9: who completes what, and when

USCIS’s Completing Section 1 page (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) states that employees must complete and sign Section 1 no later than their first day of employment, and may complete it any time after they accept the job offer. It also states that you must make the form’s instructions and the Lists of Acceptable Documents available to newly hired employees, and that Social Security number is optional in Section 1 unless you participate in E-Verify.

USCIS’s Completing Section 2 page (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) states that you or your authorized representative must complete and sign Section 2 within three business days of the date of hire, meaning the first day of work for pay; its example is an employee who begins on a Monday, for whom Section 2 is due Thursday. It states that if the job lasts less than three days, Section 2 is due no later than the first day of work for pay. The regulation says the same: 8 CFR 274a.2(b)(1)(ii)(B), as read on the eCFR (retrieved 14 Oct 2026), requires Section 2 “within three business days of the hire.”

The same USCIS page states that the employee presents either one List A document, or one List B document together with one List C document, and that you must examine each document to determine whether it reasonably appears to be genuine and to relate to the employee.

Form I-9: remote examination and retention

USCIS’s remote examination page (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) describes an alternative to physical examination of documents and states that you must participate in E-Verify in good standing to use it. It states that an employer that offers it at an E-Verify hiring site must do so consistently for all employees at that site, with the stated exception for offering it to remote hires only. The Section 2 page states that employers must physically examine documents except those that participate in E-Verify.

For retention, 8 CFR 274a.2(b)(2)(i)(A) on the eCFR (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) requires you to keep the Form I-9 for three years after the date of hire or one year after employment ends, whichever is later. The USCIS retention page (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) adds that forms may be stored on paper, microfilm, microfiche or electronically, that you must be able to present them for inspection within three business days of the request, that Forms I-9 are never mailed to USCIS or ICE, and that USCIS recommends keeping them separate from personnel records.

Form W-4 and state withholding certificates

IRS Publication 15 (2026), in its section on withholding from employees’ wages (retrieved 14 Oct 2026), states that you have a new employee complete a Form W-4 when they start work and make it effective with the first wage payment. If a new employee does not give you a completed Form W-4 in 2026, the publication says to treat them as having checked Single or Married filing separately in Step 1(c) with no entries in Steps 2, 3 or 4. For an invalid form, it says to tell the employee it is invalid and ask for another; if you do not get a valid one and hold an earlier valid Form W-4, you withhold as you did before. The IRS About Form W-4 page (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) says employees complete the form so the employer can withhold the correct federal income tax, and suggests a new form when personal or financial circumstances change.

This page does not state any state’s own withholding certificate rules. The IRS pages we read cover federal income tax withholding only, and we did not read a state revenue agency page for this topic. Check the state’s revenue agency for its form and whether it accepts the federal Form W-4.

Reporting the hire to the state directory of new hires

Publication 15 (2026), under Hiring New Employees (retrieved 14 Oct 2026), states that you are required to report any new employee to a designated state new hire registry and that many states accept a copy of Form W-4 with employer information added. The federal statute, 42 U.S.C. 653a as reproduced by Cornell LII (retrieved 14 Oct 2026), sets out the content and timing. The report goes to the directory of the state where the newly hired employee works and contains the employee’s name, address and Social Security number, the date services for pay were first performed, and the employer’s name, address and employer identification number.

On timing, subsection (b) states that each State may provide the time within which the report must be made, but the report must be made not later than 20 days after the date the employer hires the employee; for an employer transmitting reports electronically, it allows two monthly transmissions not less than 12 days nor more than 16 days apart. Because a state may set a shorter window, the 20 days is the outer federal limit, not necessarily your state’s deadline. The statute defines a newly hired employee as one not previously employed by you, or previously employed but separated for at least 60 consecutive days, and says an employer with employees in two or more states that reports electronically may designate one state to receive its reports. It permits states to set a civil penalty of up to $25 per failure, or $500 where the failure results from a conspiracy between employer and employee.

E-Verify: what the federal pages say

USCIS’s page on special rules for E-Verify users (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) states that Form I-9 is mandatory while E-Verify is voluntary for most employers, and that E-Verify requires the employee’s Social Security number and a photograph on a List B document. The E-Verify Fact vs. Fiction page (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) states that E-Verify is required for most companies with federal government contracts and that over 20 states require it for certain employers, and that a participating worksite must use it consistently for all new hires at that location. We read no individual state’s page, so we cannot tell you whether your state requires it.

Required postings and notices

Which workplace posters apply depends on the statute and on whether the employer is covered by it. For one example, 29 CFR 825.300(a) (retrieved 14 Oct 2026) states that every employer covered by the FMLA must post the general notice in conspicuous places where it can be readily seen by employees and applicants, even if no employee is eligible for FMLA leave, and that electronic posting is sufficient if it otherwise meets the section’s requirements. The Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division’s posters page is the federal starting point for the wider list; it refused our requests (HTTP 403), so we state nothing from it.

What we could not confirm

The Office of Child Support Services employer new-hire reporting page (acf.gov, formerly acf.hhs.gov) answered every request from our environment with an access challenge and was not read; the deadline above comes from the statute text instead. Several USCIS Handbook for Employers (M-274) section URLs returned not-found, so we relied on the equivalent I-9 Central pages and the regulation. We did not read any state’s new-hire reporting page, state withholding certificate, state E-Verify mandate or state posting list, so none is stated. We did not confirm an E-Verify case-creation deadline from a page we read, so none is stated.

Where this sits

Where this sits: once a hire is onboarded, FMLA eligibility turns on 12 months and 1,250 hours of service with a covered employer. The coverage, eligibility and notice rules are in the FMLA employer guide.

Where this sits: the tax withheld under each new hire’s Form W-4 is then deposited and reported on the federal schedules laid out in the payroll tax deposit guide.

Where this sits: personnel records created at hiring fall under the federal retention rules and, as headcount grows, the anti-discrimination coverage thresholds laid out in the EEOC obligations guide.