Texas New Hire Reporting: The 20-Day Deadline Most Small Businesses Miss

What New Hire Reporting Is

Texas requires every employer to report each newly hired employee to the state. The report goes to the Texas Attorney General's New Hire Reporting Program, and it exists primarily to help enforce child support orders — the state cross-checks new hires against support cases.

It's a simple, fast filing. But it's mandatory, it's time-bound, and a surprising number of small businesses either don't know about it or assume someone else is handling it.

The 20-Day Deadline

You must report a new hire within 20 calendar days of their hire date. The hire date is the first day the employee performs work for pay. The clock starts then — not the day they signed the offer letter, not their first full week.

There's no size threshold and no exception for small employers. If you hire one person to work for pay in Texas, the 20-day requirement applies to you.

The Part Almost Everyone Misses: Independent Contractors

Here's the requirement that catches even experienced business owners off guard. In Texas, new hire reporting isn't limited to W-2 employees. The state also requires reporting of independent contractors.

This was added in 2017 under Texas Administrative Code — 1 TAC §55.302 — and it's widely misunderstood. Most national hiring guides, written for a general audience, either skip it or bury it. If you pay independent contractors in Texas, you generally need to report them too.

So the business owner who thinks "I only use 1099 contractors, so new hire reporting doesn't apply to me" may have it exactly backwards.

What Information You Need to Report

The report itself is short. You'll need:

• The employee's full name, address, and Social Security number
• The employee's hire date (first day of work for pay)
• Your business name, address, and Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN)

That's it. The filing takes a few minutes once you have the information in hand.

How to File

Texas gives employers several ways to submit new hire reports:

• Online through the Texas Attorney General's Employer New Hire Reporting portal — the fastest method for most small businesses
• Mail or fax using the state's reporting form
• Electronic data interchange (EDI) for larger or payroll-integrated employers

If you use a payroll service, new hire reporting may already be handled for you — but don't assume. Confirm directly with your provider whether it's included in your plan, especially for contractors.

What Happens If You Miss It

Failing to report new hires can result in a penalty for each unreported hire, with a higher penalty where there's a conspiracy between employer and employee not to report. The per-hire amounts are modest, but they add up across multiple hires — and being out of compliance is the kind of thing that surfaces at the worst possible time, during an audit or a dispute.

A Simple System So You Never Miss It

The reliable fix is to make new hire reporting a fixed step in your onboarding process — not something you remember to do. Tie it to a checklist that runs every single time you bring someone on:

• Collect I-9 and W-4
• File the new hire report with the Texas OAG (within 20 days — ideally Day 1)
• Confirm whether the worker is an employee or contractor — and report contractors too
• Keep a copy of the confirmation in the personnel file

When new hire reporting is built into a written onboarding checklist, the 20-day deadline takes care of itself.

The Bottom Line

Texas new hire reporting is quick, free, and easy to do — and easy to forget. The 20-day clock, the no-exceptions rule for small employers, and the often-missed contractor requirement are exactly the kind of details that fall through the cracks when onboarding isn't systematized. Build it into your process once, and it stops being something you have to remember.