Employer number, quarterly return and new hire reporting

The Employer Services Portal allows electronic transactions directly with the Department of Labor and Human Resources without travelling to its central offices. The online services DTRH lists are: requesting the Employer Number for the Unemployment Insurance programme and Temporary Non-Occupational Disability Insurance (Employer Registration); declaring wages; reporting changes in employer status; filing quarterly tax returns; paying quarterly tax returns online; reporting new employees; and filing the “Remote Tax” quarterly return. Any new employer can register directly to obtain their employer number and meet their unemployment and disability payments; employers already in the Department’s tax system — around 70,000 — are registered automatically and receive access details by letter.

Every employer who employs in Puerto Rico. New employers register directly on the portal to obtain the employer number. Those already in the Department’s tax system are auto-registered: DTRH issues a series of letters pre-registering them in the new employer tax system and sending their username and password. Once an employer has their registration number and password they can perform all filing and payment functions.

• Obtaining the Employer Number for Unemployment Insurance and Temporary Non-Occupational Disability Insurance, through the portal’s Employer Registration.Verified against the official source
• Filing each quarter of the calendar year the quarterly declaration of wages paid to each employee, detailing how many employees worked in the last three months and what wages they received.Verified against the official source
• Reporting new employees, full or part time. The DTRH page publishes two different deadlines for this: its own text says within the first 19 days of hiring, and the paragraph on the federal PRWORA law says on or before 20 days.Verified against the official source

Information pending verification.

1. 1

   Step 1: Get the employer number

   Any new employer can register directly on the Employer Services Portal to obtain their employer number and meet their Unemployment Insurance and Disability (SINOT) payments. Registration is done on the web and, once complete, DTRH emails the registration confirmation. If your company already existed in the Department’s tax system, this is unnecessary: the roughly 70,000 already-registered employers are auto-registered, and DTRH sends them letters with the username and password.

2. 2

   Step 2: Upload the quarter’s wages

   DTRH offers four mechanisms and it pays to choose well. Manual, individual entry for each employee, with social security number, name and amount paid in the quarter. Automatic calculation of taxable wages based on the caps. Wage upload in a pre-established format, importing a file. Or bringing forward the previous quarter’s employees with their wages at zero; the Department itself says this tends to be the most used option, because payroll generally does not vary much from quarter to quarter in headcount.

3. 3

   Step 3: Know the caps: $7,000 and $9,000

   The automatic taxable-wage calculation runs against two limits per calendar year: $7,000 for unemployment and $9,000 for SINOT. They are different figures and they are per employee, so if you calculate by hand it is easy to slip and apply the same cap to both components.

4. 4

   Step 4: File and pay the quarterly return

   For each quarter of the calendar year employers must file the quarterly declaration of wages paid to each employee, detailing how many employees worked in the last three months and what wages they received, in order to calculate the quarter’s contribution. The tax rate for the current calendar year is applied across three components: Unemployment, SINOT and Special Contribution. Payment is made online by check (ACH) over a secure connection; on completion a receipt is provided and a confirmation email is sent. The portal keeps a history of all the employer’s activity.

5. 5

   Step 5: Report every new hire: 19 or 20 days

   Here DTRH contradicts itself on the same page, so we give you both versions. Its own text says all Puerto Rico employers must report their new employees within the first 19 days of hiring, full or part time. The following paragraph, on the federal PRWORA law of 1996, says it is mandatory to provide the new employee’s details to the local state directory where they are hired and rehired, full or part time, on or before 20 days from being hired. Nothing on the page reconciles the two figures. Work to the shorter one, 19 days: it is the only one that complies under either reading.

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   Step 6: Why New Hires exists

   It is worth knowing what it is for, because it explains why the deadline is taken seriously. Federally, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996 as part of welfare reform, requiring US jurisdictions to maintain a local registry of new employees. Locally, the Organic Act of the Child Support Administration — ASUME, Ley 5 of 30 December 1986, as amended — requires Puerto Rico employers to provide the details of every person employed or re-employed. The process used to be done by fax; now it can also be done directly on the portal, where you can print the form and see your hiring history.

Through the Department of Labor and Human Resources Employer Services Portal, which DTRH links from its Tax Service page. Each employer has a master account from which individual users can be created with permissions for data entry and for quarterly payments.

• Opening a business with employees and not getting the DTRH employer number, believing Hacienda and the Department of State are enough.
• Creating a new account when the company was already in the tax system and only the letter with the username was needed.
• Applying the same taxable-wage cap to both components: it is $7,000 for unemployment and $9,000 for SINOT.
• Forgetting the return is quarterly and must be filed each quarter of the calendar year.
• Leaving New Hires until after the month: the shorter deadline the page publishes is 19 days.
• Not reporting part-time employees: the obligation covers full and part time.
• Entering payroll by hand each quarter when you can bring forward the previous quarter or import a file.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Departamento del Trabajo y Recursos Humanos (DTRH)

  Departamento del Trabajo

  www.trabajo.pr.gov