California Payroll Tax Reporting Changes

The quarterly payroll tax forms filed with the Employment Development Department are changing effective with the filing of your first quarter 2011 forms. The new forms to be aware of are the DE 9 and DE 9C. These two forms replace the quarterly form DE 6 and the annual form DE 7. Each quarter employers will prepare a reconciliation similar to what was done on the year end reconciliation. The state believes that this new quarterly reporting will allow the EDD and employers to recognize discrepencies more quickly. This will help you receive refunds faster but will also help the EDD find shortages sooner. If you prepare your own payroll in house you may want to check with your accounting software provider to ensure that your system can handle the forms. For those of you using Quickbooks, it appears that your software will be updated if you are current on your support contract. As a reminder your first quarter returns are due on April 30th.