How to Hire Employees in West Virginia: The Complete Compliance Sequence

The first time I helped a founder hire in West Virginia, we lost a week to a single assumption. He had hired in three other states, so he built his checklist around a 20-day new hire report. West Virginia gives you 14 days. His new hire started on a Wednesday, the first payroll run landed 16 days later, and the report went out with the run. That is late, and it is late in a way no software warns you about if the software was configured for a different state.

West Virginia is not a hard state to hire in. It is a state with a handful of rules that sit one notch off the national default: a shorter reporting window, a minimum wage that turns on how many people work at one location, mandatory workers compensation with no small-employer escape hatch, a written pay notice due at hiring rather than at the first paycheck, and five neighboring states whose residents get a withholding exemption. Miss any one of them and the fix costs more than the original task.

This guide runs the sequence in the order the work actually happens, from the federal EIN through the ninetieth day. I built FirstHR because this kind of work fails on timing rather than knowledge, and timing is what software is good at. Every deadline below is sourced to the statute or the agency that enforces it.

West Virginia Hiring at a Glance: Every Deadline in One Place

Ten tasks stand between you and a legally employed first hire, and six of them carry a hard deadline. The table below is the whole sequence with the enforcing agency for each item, so you can see which deadlines run from the hire date and which run from the moment you become liable as an employer.

Two of these have no equivalent in most other states. The written pay notice under Code section 21-5-9 is due at hiring, and the new hire report is due in 14 days rather than 20. Everything else is a familiar federal or state task with a West Virginia detail attached.

Step 1: Get Your Federal Employer Identification Number

Apply for a federal Employer Identification Number before anything else, because every later step asks for it. The EIN is the number the IRS uses to identify your business on payroll deposits, quarterly returns and W-2 filings, and the state registration application will not proceed without it. Apply at IRS.gov, at no cost, and the number is issued at the end of the session.

If you already have an EIN from forming the entity, you do not need another. If you have been running as a sole proprietor and filing under your Social Security number, you need one now. Payroll tax reporting cannot run on a personal SSN once you have employees, and the state new hire report asks for the FEIN specifically.

Step 2: Register the Business Through the One Stop Business Portal

West Virginia routes employer registration through a single online application at the One Stop Business Portal, business4.wv.gov, which reaches the West Virginia Tax Division, the Secretary of State where an entity filing is required, and WorkForce West Virginia in one pass. That is the answer to the question most first-time employers ask here: there is no separate agency-by-agency crawl, and the portal is the intended front door.

The core output is the Business Registration Certificate, issued by the Tax Division. Every individual or entity doing business in the state has to hold one before operating, and the application is Form WV/BUS-APP. The registration fee is $30 unless your entity qualifies for an exemption. The same application opens your employer withholding tax account, which is what you will use to remit state income tax withheld from wages.

Registering Before the Offer, Not After

The practical sequencing advice: complete the registration before the offer letter goes out, not after the person accepts. Account numbers can take a few days to issue, and both the first withholding deposit and the first quarterly wage report reference them. A founder who registers in the same week as the start date usually spends that week chasing numbers instead of onboarding.

Step 3: Open Your Unemployment Insurance Account with WorkForce West Virginia

WorkForce West Virginia administers unemployment insurance, and you become a liable employer after paying $1,500 or more in total gross wages in a calendar quarter, or after having at least one employee in twenty different weeks during a calendar year. Those weeks do not have to be consecutive and it does not have to be the same person. Almost every business that hires a single full-time employee crosses the wage threshold inside the first quarter.

The numbers that matter for budgeting are set out below. The taxable wage base is the part most often configured wrong, because it was a moving target until Senate Bill 841 fixed it at $9,500. The 2024 base was $9,521, so any reference table built before that change carries the wrong number.

Your state unemployment tax rate is an employer-paid cost, not a payroll deduction, and it is worth modeling before the offer because it moves with claims experience. A single contested separation in year one can raise the rate for years afterward, which is one more reason to document performance conversations from the start.

Step 4: Verify Employment Eligibility with Form I-9

Every employee hired in the United States completes Form I-9, and the two halves have different deadlines. Section 1 is the employee attestation and is due no later than the first day of work. Section 2 is yours, and it is due by the end of the third business day after work begins.

In Section 2 you physically examine original documents that establish identity and work authorization, then record what you saw. You do not get to specify which documents the person presents. Asking for a particular document, or for more documents than the list requires, is itself a violation. The acceptable I-9 documentation lists are printed on the form.

Civil penalties for paperwork and substantive violations run from $288 to $2,861 per form under the inflation-adjusted schedule published in the Federal Register on January 2, 2025. The fine attaches per employee, not per audit, so a small filing habit repeated across a year of hiring compounds quickly.

Retention and Audit Readiness

The retention math trips people up because it is a comparison, not a fixed term. For someone who works four years, the controlling date is one year after termination. For someone who works four months, it is three years from hire. Our guidance on how long to keep employee records covers the rest of the file, but the I-9 is the one with its own clock.

E-Verify in West Virginia

E-Verify is not mandated for private employers in the state. Article 21-1B of the West Virginia Code makes it unlawful to knowingly employ an unauthorized worker and requires verification of legal status or work authorization before employment, but it permits document-based verification rather than requiring the federal system. Senate Bill 522 in the 2026 regular session, the West Virginia Jobs Protection Act, proposed a statewide E-Verify mandate effective July 1, 2026. It was introduced on January 20, 2026, referred to Senate Government Organization, and did not move out of committee. The I-9 obligation is unaffected either way.

Step 5: Collect Form W-4 and West Virginia Form IT-104

West Virginia has a state income tax, which means two withholding certificates rather than one. The employee completes federal Form W-4 and West Virginia Form WV/IT-104, the state Employee Withholding Exemption Certificate, before the first paycheck. Collecting only the W-4 leaves state withholding unconfigured, and the correction lands as an amended return rather than a quick fix.

State withholding rates were cut by Senate Bill 392, signed on March 31, 2026. The schedule runs five brackets from 2.11 to 4.58 percent, effective June 12, 2026 and retroactive to January 1 of that year. If you are configuring West Virginia payroll for the first time, verify that your provider loaded the revised tables rather than assuming it.

The Five Reciprocity States

West Virginia shares a border with five states and holds a reciprocity agreement with all of them. A resident of Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania or Virginia whose only West Virginia source income is wages or salary is exempt from West Virginia personal income tax withholding. The exemption is not automatic: the employee still files Form WV/IT-104 and claims it there, and you keep the form on file as your authority for not withholding.

Everything in that table except Section 2 of the I-9 can be collected with e-signature before the start date. That is the whole argument for handling new hire paperwork digitally: the first day gets spent on the work rather than on a clipboard.

Step 6: Give the Written Pay Notice Required at Hiring

West Virginia Code section 21-5-9 requires employers to notify employees in writing, at the time of hiring, of the rate of pay and of the day, hour and place of payment. This is a distinct statutory duty and it is the step most often missed, because in most states pay terms simply appear on the first pay stub.

The same section carries two related obligations. You make employment practices and policies on vacation pay, sick leave and comparable matters available in writing or through a posted notice accessible to employees. And you furnish each employee with an itemized statement of deductions for every pay period in which deductions are made. Changes to pay arrangements require written or posted notice before the change takes effect.

The efficient way to satisfy all of this is a signed offer letter that states the rate, the pay frequency, the payday and the place of payment, paired with an employee handbook covering leave and vacation policy. One document, one acknowledgment, statutory duty discharged, and a written record that settles any later dispute about what was agreed.

Pay frequency itself is set by Code section 21-5-3: settle with employees at least twice every month, with no more than 19 days between settlements, absent a special agreement. That is stricter than a semi-monthly schedule implies, because a payday on the 1st and the 25th would exceed 19 days across the month boundary.

Step 7: File the New Hire Report Within Fourteen Days

West Virginia Code section 48-18-125 requires employers to report every new hire, rehire or return to work within 14 days. Most states allow 20, and the 20-day figure appears in a great deal of national compliance material, which is exactly why this deadline gets missed by employers who have hired elsewhere. Reports go to the West Virginia New Hire Reporting Center, electronically or on paper.

The timing conflict is the real risk. A person hired on the 20th of a month with a payroll run on the 5th has a report due before payroll ever touches their record. If your provider triggers new hire reporting from the payroll run rather than from the hire event, it will miss the West Virginia window on a predictable share of your hires. Ask when the filing fires, not whether it happens.

Step 8: Put Workers Compensation Coverage in Force

Workers compensation is mandatory in West Virginia and there is no general small-employer exemption. Every employer must maintain coverage under Chapter 23 of the Code, and the Employer Coverage Unit at the West Virginia Offices of the Insurance Commissioner enforces it, verifies coverage with other state agencies, and assesses fines against noncompliant employers.

The exemptions in rule 85-8-4 are narrow and do not scale with company size. They cover domestic service, agricultural services employers with five or fewer full-time employees, casual employers, churches, organized professional sports, volunteer rescue squads and police auxiliaries, and employers whose workers are covered by the federal Longshore and Harbor Workers Compensation Act. Sole proprietors and independent contractors are not required to carry coverage for themselves.

Coverage is purchased from private insurance carriers. Get the policy bound before the first day of work rather than during the first week, and check the effective date on the binder against the start date. An employee who is injured in a gap between hire and policy inception is a problem with no clean solution.

Our overview of workers compensation insurance covers how classification codes and experience modifiers drive the premium. In West Virginia the practical planning point is simply that the coverage decision is not a decision. It is a precondition for the first day of work.

Step 9: Post the Required Federal and State Notices

Federal and state law both require specific notices displayed where employees can read them during the working hours of the day. The state set comes from the West Virginia Division of Labor, WorkForce West Virginia, the Human Rights Commission and your own workers compensation carrier. All of the government versions are free downloads.

Two notes on this list. The West Virginia Parental Leave Act notice applies to state government agencies and county boards of education, not to private employers, so it is often included in commercial poster packs you do not need. And the workers compensation notice comes from your carrier rather than from a government site, which means it is the one poster you cannot download in advance.

Do not buy a poster subscription. Every required notice on this list is published free by the issuing agency, and the only thing a paid pack adds is a reminder service you can replicate with a calendar entry.

Step 10: Onboard from Day 1 Through Day 90

Compliance gets someone legally on payroll; onboarding is what makes the hire worth the cost. Research from the Work Institute has found that roughly a fifth of employee turnover occurs within the first 45 days of employment, which puts the entire return on a first hire inside the window most small employers treat as administrative overhead.

This is the part I built FirstHR for. The offer letter goes out with e-signature and carries the written pay notice the statute requires. The I-9, W-4, IT-104 and direct deposit forms are collected before Day 1. The system holds the three-day and fourteen-day clocks so they do not depend on someone remembering, and the AI onboarding wizard generates a 30-60-90 day plan from the job description. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider, at flat, predictable pricing.

West Virginia Rules That Change How You Hire

Beyond the sequence, a handful of state rules shape the offer itself, the handbook and the first termination. These are the ones that differ enough from the national default to be worth reading before you write a job description, and the full picture sits in our West Virginia compliance hub.

The Minimum Wage Rule Nobody Expects

The state minimum wage is $8.75 per hour and has been unchanged since January 1, 2016. It carries no indexing mechanism, so it moves only by legislation. What makes it unusual is coverage. Under Code section 21-5C-1(e), the state wage law reaches only employers with six or more people employed during a workweek at any one separate, distinct and permanent location or business establishment.

That count is per location, not per company. A business with several small sites can be under the state rule at some and over it at others, and the answer changes the moment a sixth person is scheduled at a single site. Below the threshold, the federal minimum of $7.25 generally applies instead. The West Virginia Division of Labor also notes that state overtime requirements do not apply where 80 percent or more of the workforce at a given employer is subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is most employers. The tipped cash wage is $2.62, built on a 70 percent tip credit, and our guide to the tipped minimum wage explains the top-up mechanics.

Two more that matter at hiring. The West Virginia Human Rights Act reaches employers of twelve or more people in the state for twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year, and complaints go to the Human Rights Commission within 365 days. And the Safer Workplace Act, effective July 7, 2017, expressly makes it lawful to test applicants and employees for drugs and alcohol as a condition of hiring or continued employment, provided you implement the written policy, notice and procedural requirements in Article 21-3E first. Testing without that policy in place is where employers get into trouble, not the testing itself.

City Rules: The Service Fee Is the One That Hits Payroll

No West Virginia municipality sets its own minimum wage or paid sick leave mandate, so the local layer here does not change your wage floor. What it does change is withholding. Several cities charge a flat weekly city service fee on people who work inside city limits, and the employer is the withholding agent.

The service fee catches employers twice. First, it applies based on where the work is performed, which includes someone working from a home inside city limits, so a fully remote hire can trigger it. Second, the amounts are set by ordinance and change without a statewide announcement, so verify the current figure with the city finance office rather than with a payroll setup guide.

On the non-discrimination side, a number of municipalities including Charleston, Morgantown and Wheeling have adopted ordinances covering classes the state statute does not list. If you hire across multiple towns, write the handbook to the broadest local standard rather than maintaining a different policy per site. There is also no statewide fair chance hiring law binding private employers, though expunged records are off limits, and a few municipalities have adopted their own hiring rules. Our guide to running a background check covers the federal process that applies everywhere.

Employee or Independent Contractor: The Classification Trap

Misclassifying an employee as an independent contractor is the most expensive avoidable error in this whole sequence, and West Virginia adds a wrinkle other states do not. Because workers compensation is mandatory with no small-employer exemption, a misclassified worker who gets hurt is an uninsured claim against a business that believed it had no coverage obligation at all.

The classification question turns on control. Both the IRS common-law test and the state unemployment analysis ask whether you direct how the work gets done or only what result is delivered. The factors below are the ones that decide most real cases at small employers.

One detail specific to this state: properly classified contractors still get reported. Once payments for services reach $2,500 or more per year, the contractor becomes reportable to the new hire reporting center within 14 days of first making payments that reach that aggregate. Employers who think of new hire reporting as a payroll function tend to miss this entirely, because the contractor never appears in payroll. If you use contractors regularly, our guide to hiring a contractor walks through the paperwork, and the safe default when the answer is genuinely unclear is a W-2 hire.

Classification also interacts with wage and hour law. A worker you classify as an employee still has to be correctly sorted as exempt or non-exempt under the FLSA before you decide whether overtime applies. Getting classification right and exemption wrong produces the same back-pay math.

The Mistakes That Cost West Virginia Employers the Most

These are the failures I see repeatedly, and every one of them is a timing or assumption error rather than a gap in knowledge. The employer knew the I-9 was required. They just did not finish it by the third business day.

The common thread is that compliance at a small business fails when the founder is busy, not when the founder is uninformed. Which is why the fix is almost never more reading. It is a task with a date attached, owned by someone, firing automatically from the hire event rather than from the payroll calendar.

If this is your first employee anywhere rather than your first in this state, our broader guide to hiring your first employee covers the parts that are the same in every state, including offer letters, payroll setup and the ninety-day plan.

Frequently Asked Questions