South Carolina Form UCE-101, the Employer’s Quarterly Contribution and Wage Report, is filed four times a year with the Department of Employment and Workforce (DEW) to report wages and pay state unemployment insurance tax. Most employers file it online through the SUITS portal at uitax.dew.sc.gov; employers with ten or more employees are required to file electronically.1South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 41-31 – Contributions and Payments to the Unemployment Trust Fund For 2026, the tax applies to the first $14,000 each employee earns, and your rate — assigned annually by DEW based on your experience rating — falls somewhere between 0.060% and 5.460%, with new employers at 1.060%.2South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. Tax Rate Information
What to Gather Before You Start
The form asks for account-level identifiers and detailed payroll data. Pull the following together before opening SUITS or picking up the paper form:
- Your Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN).
- Your eight-digit DEW Employer Account Number (EAN), assigned when you registered.
- Your assigned tax rate for the year, shown on the Notice of Contribution Rate DEW mails near year-end or visible in your SUITS account.
- For every employee paid during the quarter: full name, Social Security number, Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code, total hours worked, and total gross wages.1South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 41-31 – Contributions and Payments to the Unemployment Trust Fund
- Total gross wages paid across all employees for the quarter.
Getting the employee-level detail right matters. DEW uses these individual wage records to determine benefit eligibility when a worker files an unemployment claim, and a mismatched Social Security number or transposed wage figure will trigger correspondence asking you to fix it.
How to Calculate the Tax
South Carolina unemployment tax applies only to the first $14,000 of each employee’s wages in the calendar year.2South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. Tax Rate Information Anything above that cap for a given employee is “excess wages” and drops out of your calculation. Three steps:
- Add up every dollar paid to all employees during the quarter. That is your total gross wages.
- Subtract excess wages. For any employee whose year-to-date earnings have already crossed $14,000, remove the portion above the cap.
- Multiply the remaining taxable wages by your assigned rate. Taxable wages of $50,000 at a 1.060% rate produce $530 in tax.
The excess-wage tally is cumulative across the calendar year, not per quarter. An employee who earned $10,000 in Q1 has only $4,000 of taxable wages remaining for the rest of the year, which is why quarterly bills tend to shrink as the year goes on. In SUITS, this math happens automatically once wage data is entered or uploaded. On paper, you do it yourself.3South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. Paying Your Tax
Filing Through SUITS
SUITS is where most employers submit their UCE-101 and pay the tax.4South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. SUITS Once you log in, the system gives you three ways to enter wage data:
- Manual entry. Type each employee’s information directly into the form.
- Retrieve and modify. Pull forward the prior quarter’s data and update it.
- File upload. Upload a wage file in ICESA, EFW2, XML, or CSV format. SUITS validates it, flags errors, and calculates tax due.
After you submit the wage data, SUITS confirms receipt and prompts payment. Accepted methods include ACH debit, ACH credit, credit card, check, cash, and money order.5South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. FAQs Third-party agents filing for multiple clients can upload bulk wage files and allocate payments across accounts.
If you have not yet registered, you can do that in SUITS by selecting “Register for an Account.”6South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. Employer Page Your EAN is issued once registration is processed.
Filing on Paper
Employers with fewer than ten employees may file the paper UCE-101 instead. The tradeoff is that you calculate the tax yourself, since the paper form does no arithmetic for you.3South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. Paying Your Tax Mail the completed form with payment to DEW; the postmark must be on or before the quarterly deadline. DEW can waive the electronic-filing rule for larger employers only where electronic filing would impose an unreasonable cost.1South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 41-31 – Contributions and Payments to the Unemployment Trust Fund
Quarterly Deadlines
The report and payment must be received online or postmarked by midnight on these dates:4South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. SUITS
- Q1 (January through March): April 30
- Q2 (April through June): July 31
- Q3 (July through September): October 31
- Q4 (October through December): January 31
Once you are a liable employer, you file every quarter, even the ones with no payroll. If you paid no wages and had no employees, file a zero-wage report to stay current. The obligation ends only when you formally apply with DEW to terminate coverage.
What Late Filing Costs
Miss the deadline and DEW assesses a report penalty of $25 or 10% of the contributions due, whichever is greater, capped at $1,000. The penalty is charged 15 days after DEW mails a delinquent report notice.5South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. FAQs
Unpaid taxes accrue interest at 1% per month, calculated on the outstanding balance as of the first of each month. Where liability is established retroactively, interest runs at half of 1% per month from the original due date through the date liability is officially established.5South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. FAQs Fall two quarters behind and you face compounding interest plus a penalty on each late report.
Fixing an Error After You File
To correct a submitted report, use the “Amend Prior Report” option in SUITS. Enter the actual wages that should have been reported, not the difference between the original and corrected figures.7South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. SUITS Wage Report and Payment File Specifications Typical scenarios:
- Wrong wages for an employee. Re-enter the same Social Security number with the correct wage amount and the appropriate adjustment reason code.
- Employee reported who should not have been. Enter their Social Security number with zero wages and the relevant adjustment code.
- Employee missed on the original report. Add a new record with their information and wages.
A single file upload cannot contain both an original filing and an amendment for the same employer and quarter. If the correction increases the tax owed, pay the balance promptly to limit interest.
How Timely Filing Affects Your FUTA Bill
The federal unemployment tax (FUTA) rate is 6.0% on the first $7,000 of each employee’s annual wages. Employers who pay their state unemployment taxes in full and on time receive a credit of up to 5.4%, which drops the effective FUTA rate to 0.6%, or $42 per employee per year.8Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 759, Form 940, Employers Annual Federal Unemployment Tax Return South Carolina is not currently a FUTA credit-reduction state, so employers here keep the full 5.4% credit as long as their quarterly UCE-101 filings and payments stay current. FUTA is reported annually on IRS Form 940, due January 31, the same day as your Q4 UCE-101.