New Employees?

published May, 2007

If you’ve hired a new employee in California, here’s a checklist, with links to the PDF forms you’ll need to gather from each employee. You don’t mail the federal forms in; you DO mail in the DE-34 to California, and if your new employee claims more than 10 exemptions on the W-4, contact us for more info. 
If you have an employee with NO withholding, they may be eligible to receive “advance EIC.” Contact us or your payroll service if this happens, or if an employee asks you about it.

  1. The W-4 collects an employee’s name, SSN, address, and tax withholding status. California also has a version (DE-4) if the state and federal are DIFFERENT, otherwise, just use the W-4 for both. 
    http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf?portlet=3
  2. The I-9 is now from the Department of Homeland Security and verifies eligibility for employment.
    http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf 
  3. The DE-34 reports new employees to the Employment Development Department—You DO mail this one in. This lets the EDD track people who have skipped out on child support while they’re still working for you and before quarter end reports get mailed and processed.
    http://www.edd.ca.gov/taxrep/de34.pdf 

You should keep these forms for 4 years.