Texas Employer New Hire Reporting Form: Deadline and Penalties

Every Texas employer must file the Texas Employer New Hire Reporting Form for each new or rehired worker within 20 calendar days of that person’s first paid day of work. You can use the official one-page form from the Attorney General’s Child Support Division or submit a W-4 that carries the same information, and you can send it online, by fax, by mail, or by phone.¹

What Information the Form Requires

Federal law sets seven mandatory fields on every new hire report:²

Employee’s full legal name
Employee’s current address
Employee’s Social Security number
Date of hire (the first day services were performed for pay)
Employer’s name
Employer’s address
Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN)

Those seven are the floor. The Texas form also gives you optional boxes worth filling in, because they cut down on follow-up from the state and speed up any child support order that later attaches to the employee:

State Employer ID Number assigned by the Texas Workforce Commission for unemployment tax
Employee’s date of birth
Employee’s salary and pay frequency: weekly, biweekly (26 periods), semi-monthly (24 periods), monthly, or annual³
Employer phone, fax, and named contact person
State where the employee was hired

Check the Social Security number against the employee’s card. A single transposed digit will keep the record from matching in the state directory. Use the same FEIN that appears on your quarterly wage filings so the state can link the new hire to your existing employer record.

Filling Out the Form

The official form is a single page from the Attorney General’s website. In older administrative code references it appears as Form 1856e in English and 1856s in Spanish.⁴ The page is divided into three identical sections labeled A, B, and C, so you can report up to three employees on one sheet. Each section has employer information at the top (boxes 1 through 13) and employee information below (boxes 14 through 29). If you have just one hire to report, fill in Section A and leave B and C blank.

If you’d rather not use the dedicated form, Texas will accept a copy of the employee’s W-4 as long as it carries all seven required elements. Print or type entries in large capital letters. Cursive is not accepted on paper submissions.⁴ The standard W-4 has no date-of-hire field, so write that date in the margin or attach a note. For most employers the dedicated form is simpler, because its fields map directly to what the state expects.

How to Submit the Form

Texas gives you four channels.³

Online Through the Employer Portal

The Attorney General’s employer portal at employer.oag.texas.gov is the fastest option. Request a user ID and password, log in, enter the employee’s details, and you’ll get electronic confirmation. The portal also supports file uploads and FTP for larger employers submitting batches.⁵

Fax

Fax the completed form to (800) 732-5015. Keep the transmission confirmation as your proof of timely filing.

Mail

Send the form to:

Central File Maintenance
P.O. Box 12048
Austin, TX 78711-2048

If you mail it, build in a few days for postal delivery. The 20-day clock doesn’t pause for transit. Keep a photocopy of what you send.

Phone

Call (800) 850-6442 to report by phone. This works for a single hire when you’re away from a printer or the portal, but it isn’t practical for reporting several people at once.

The 20-Day Deadline

You have 20 calendar days from the day the employee first performs services for pay. That window counts weekends and holidays, not just business days.⁶ The date of hire is not the day the person accepted the offer or was set up in your HR system. It’s the first day they actually worked for wages.

The reporting requirement covers two groups. A new employee is anyone who has never worked for your company or received earnings from you before. A rehire is a former employee who has been separated from you, or has not received earnings from you, for at least 60 consecutive days before returning.⁷ Independent contractors count too. For new hire reporting purposes, Texas treats a contractor whose income is reported on a 1099-MISC as an employee, and the relevant date is the day the contract begins rather than a first day of work.⁸ There are no exemptions based on company size, hours worked, or pay level.

Batch and Electronic Filers

If you report electronically in volume through file uploads or FTP, you follow a different schedule. Instead of filing within 20 days of each individual hire, you send two transmissions per month, spaced no fewer than 12 and no more than 16 days apart.⁹ The Attorney General’s office can be reached at (800) 850-6442 for questions on acceptable file formats.

If You Have Employees in Other States

Companies with workers in two or more states have a choice under federal law. You can report each new hire to the state where that person works, or designate one state to receive all your new hire reports nationwide — the single-state option is available only if you transmit reports electronically.¹⁰ To use it, register with the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement through the OCSE Child Support Portal at ocsp.acf.hhs.gov, or complete the Multistate Employer Registration Form and email it to msedb@acf.hhs.gov.¹¹ You need at least one employee working in the state you designate, and if your company later merges with or acquires another business, update or re-submit the registration.

Penalties for Missing the Deadline

Texas Family Code Section 234.105 treats late or missing reports as civil violations. The fines are $25 per employee you knowingly fail to report, or $500 per employee if the failure results from a conspiracy between you and the employee to avoid filing or to submit a false or incomplete report.¹² The Attorney General’s office can sue to collect. The word “knowingly” does real work: a good-faith mistake on one report is unlikely to trigger a fine, but a pattern of ignoring the requirement will. Late reporting also delays the state’s ability to serve income withholding orders for child support, which brings its own follow-up when the Attorney General’s office starts asking why someone has been on payroll for months without a report on file.

The cleanest way to stay clear of all of this is to add new hire reporting to your onboarding checklist alongside the I-9 and W-4. The 20-day window is wide enough that even a manual process works for smaller employers, and the online portal handles volume for anyone hiring regularly.

1
Texas Workforce Commission. New Hire Reporting Laws
2
Administration for Children and Families. New Hire Reporting
3
Texas Office of the Attorney General. Texas Employer New Hire Reporting Form
4
Cornell Law Institute. 1 Texas Administrative Code 55.303 – Employer New Hire Reporting Requirements
5
Office of the Attorney General of Texas. New Hire Reporting Methods
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Office of the Attorney General of Texas. New Hire Frequently Asked Questions FAQ
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State of Texas. Texas Code Family Code 234.101 – Definitions
8
Justia. 1 Texas Administrative Code 55.302 – Definitions
9
Texas Workforce Commission. New Hire Reporting
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 653a – State Directory of New Hires
11
Administration for Children & Families. Multistate Employer Registration Form for New Hire Reporting
12
State of Texas. Texas Code Family Code 234.105 – Civil Penalty