Louisiana Payroll: Employer Tax and Software Guide

Louisiana is the rare state where payroll tax setup is genuinely short. One flat income tax rate, no local income tax in any parish, no state disability program, no paid leave premium, no sick leave mandate, and an unemployment wage base that went down. If you have run payroll in California, the Louisiana registration list looks like it is missing pages.

Then two details land. The withholding formula the state publishes does not use the statutory tax rate, so the number on a pay stub is not the number in the tax code. And the rules that actually cost money here are not tax rules: they are wage payment statutes with fixed deadlines and a ninety-day penalty, enforced in court rather than by an agency notice.

I have watched employers spend weeks choosing a platform on tax features and then get caught by a final paycheck that went out on day nineteen. This guide covers what Louisiana requires as of August 2026, the obligations tax registration does not cover, and how 10 providers price the work at 10, 25, and 50 employees.

What Louisiana requires from employers

Three obligations sit on top of federal payroll: income tax withholding with the Department of Revenue, unemployment contributions with the Workforce Commission, and new hire reporting. There is no fourth agency, no employee-side state deduction, and no local layer.

State income tax withholding

The rate is a flat 3 percent. According to the Louisiana Department of Revenue, for taxable periods beginning on or after January 1, 2025 the individual income tax rate is a flat 3 percent, replacing the graduated schedule that ran from 1.85 percent through 4.25 percent. No parish or city levies an income tax on top of it.

Withholding runs on Form L-4, formally Form R-1300, the Louisiana Employee Withholding Certificate. Unlike the federal W-4, the L-4 exists mainly to capture the standard deduction the employee claims, and that choice determines which of three formulas applies. Collecting it alongside the other new hire tax forms is the difference between a clean first payroll run and a correction.

Deposit schedules and returns

The Department of Revenue assigns payment frequency from average monthly withholding, and every employer files the same quarterly return regardless of how often they pay.

Returns and payments must be filed electronically through the Louisiana Taxpayer Access Point or approved software, and a return is required for every assigned period even when nothing was withheld. Per the Department of Revenue, closing a business does not close the withholding account automatically. You have to request it, and unrequested closures generate delinquency notices for quarters where nobody worked.

Unemployment insurance contributions

Unemployment insurance is an employer-only cost here, and 2026 is the unusual year where the number moved in favor of the employer. The Louisiana Workforce Commission set the 2026 taxable wage base at $7,000 per employee, down from $7,700, putting the state base level with the federal unemployment tax base.

Rates come from a ratio rate table blending an experience component with a shared social charge, and a solvency tax can be layered on when the projected trust fund balance falls short. Liability begins under the standard test: $1,500 of wages in a calendar quarter, or one employee for part of a day in twenty different weeks. Quarterly wage and tax reports go to the Workforce Commission by the last day of the month after quarter end.

A $7,000 base makes unemployment a rounding error on a salaried payroll and a real number on a high-turnover one. At a 2.5 percent rate a full-year employee costs $175 whatever they earn, and a restaurant hiring forty people to keep fifteen seats filled pays that $175 forty times.

The separation notice most platforms never file

Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:1576 requires an employer to file a notice of separation with the unemployment administrator for every employee who leaves for any potentially disqualifying reason, stating the separation date, a full explanation of the cause, and the payments made to the separated worker. Act 340 of the 2025 Regular Session, effective August 1, 2025, moved that deadline from three days to ten and allowed the agency copy to be transmitted electronically. The notice goes to the departing employee as well as the agency.

Ten days is still short, and it runs from the separation rather than from a pay date, which is exactly why payroll platforms miss it: nothing about a termination triggers a pay run. If the notice never goes out, the first place you see the consequence is the quarterly statement of benefits charged to your experience rating, and Revised Statutes 23:1541 gives you thirty days from the mailing of that statement to apply for review.

Minimum wage and tipped pay

Louisiana has no state minimum wage law at all, so federal $7.25 per hour is the only floor and it applies uniformly across all sixty-four parishes. Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:642 has preempted local minimum wage ordinances since 1997, and a New Orleans living wage measure approved by voters was voided under that preemption.

Tipped pay follows the federal structure, which matters more here than in most states given the size of the hospitality sector. The tipped cash wage is $2.13 with a maximum $5.12 tip credit, and the employer covers any shortfall where cash wages plus tips fall below $7.25 for the workweek. Claiming the credit also requires clean tip records to support the FICA tip credit federally.

Registration and new hire reporting

Registration is two applications with two agencies and no combined portal: the wage withholding account with the Department of Revenue, and the unemployment insurance account with the Workforce Commission. Workers compensation coverage is required for employees.

Every new hire and rehire goes to the Louisiana Directory of New Hires within twenty days, where a rehire means someone returning after at least sixty consecutive days away. The new hire report needs employee name, address, occupation, and Social Security number alongside your employer identification number.

The local layer that state registration does not cover

Louisiana has no local income tax and no local minimum wage, so the usual municipal payroll layer does not exist here. What does exist is a set of obligations outside both tax registrations, and the most expensive of them is a wage payment statute rather than a tax.

Pay frequency is written into statute

Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:633 requires employers engaged in manufacturing of any kind, boring for oil, or mining operations with ten or more employees, plus every public service corporation, to pay employees no less than twice during each calendar month, with paydays as near as practicable to two weeks apart. Bona fide executive, administrative, supervisory, and professional employees are excluded.

Everyone else has latitude on frequency but not on disclosure: employers must tell employees at hire what wages they will be paid, by what method, and how often. An employer that never designates paydays defaults by statute to the first and sixteenth. Violations carry a fine of $25 to $250 per day, which puts the choice between biweekly and semi-monthly on a legal footing here rather than an administrative one.

Occupational license tax is a business tax, not a payroll tax

Municipalities and parishes may levy an occupational license tax under Louisiana Revised Statutes 47:341, but only where two-thirds of the elected members of the local governing authority approve it and the public has been given a chance to comment at a minimum of three public hearings. The rate schedules in that chapter run off the gross receipts of the business, and the license falls due annually on January 1.

Nothing in it is measured on wages and nothing is withheld from an employee, so it is a real filing obligation that sits completely outside the payroll system. If a provider proposes a local tax filing add-on for a Louisiana-only employer, ask which jurisdiction and which wage-based tax, because there is not one. Parish sales tax registration is the same story.

The leave rule that reaches the pay run

Louisiana has no paid sick leave mandate, no paid family leave program, and no state disability insurance, which removes several deduction lines that neighboring markets carry. One statute still touches payroll directly, and it is not a deduction.

Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:965 grants any regularly employed person called or subpoenaed for state jury duty a leave of absence of up to one day, without loss of wages and without charging it to sick, emergency, or personal leave. An employer who refuses owes that day of full wages anyway plus a fine of $100 to $500 for each offense. That is a paid pay code with a statute behind it, so it needs a real line in payroll records rather than an informal note.

10 payroll providers for Louisiana employers compared

Every provider below files Louisiana withholding and Workforce Commission unemployment contributions. With no local tax layer to separate them, the axes that matter here are price, tipped wage handling, and what a second state costs.

OnPay

One plan at $49 per month plus $6 per employee, every feature included, no tiers to climb. Tax filing covers all 50 states with no multi-state surcharge, and year-end W-2 and 1099 filing sits in the base price. The plan you model at 10 employees is the plan at 50, with no upgrade triggered by a hire across the Texas line.

Gusto

The most common first payroll purchase for US small businesses. Tax filing is automatic, the interface is pleasant, and pricing is published. Simple runs $49 per month plus $6 per employee after a base increase in March 2026. The catch is that Simple is single-state only, and a hire in Texas, Mississippi, or Arkansas moves you to Plus at $80 plus $12 per employee.

Patriot Software

The cheapest legitimate full-service payroll available. Full Service is $37 per month plus $5 per employee and includes federal, state, and local tax filing plus new hire reporting. Basic is $17 plus $4 if you file taxes yourself, which here means handling Form L-1, Form L-3, and the quarterly Workforce Commission report by hand. Extra states cost $12 per month each, a surcharge that never fires for a single-state employer.

Square Payroll

At $35 per month plus $6 per person, Square is the cheapest full-service option with published pricing, covering federal, state, and local tax calculations, payments, and filings. Its strongest Louisiana argument is the sector: for a New Orleans restaurant already running Square point of sale, tips and timecards flow into payroll without an integration project, and the make-up calculation happens where the tip data lives.

SurePayroll

Owned by Paychex and aimed at very small employers and household employers. Full Service is $29 per month plus $7 per employee, with a flat $9.99 monthly multi-state fee however many states are involved. For a Louisiana business with people across the Texas or Mississippi line, that flat structure beats per-state pricing past one extra state.

QuickBooks Workforce Payroll

Formerly QuickBooks Payroll, now renamed. Core is $50 per month plus $6.50 per employee. The reason to pick it has always been the same: if your books already live in QuickBooks Online, payroll entries reach the general ledger without an export step. Per-employee pricing rose across all tiers on July 1, 2026.

ADP RUN

ADP processes payroll for roughly one in six American workers and has the deepest tax compliance engine in the category. In a low-complexity state that depth is worth less than it is in New York, so the honest argument here is scale and multi-state reach. The cost is opacity: RUN pricing is not published, third-party estimates put Essential near $79 plus $4 per employee, and contracts run a year with automatic renewal.

Paychex Flex

Paychex competes on service rather than software, and unusually among quote-driven vendors it publishes an entry rate: Essentials at $39 per month plus $5 per employee, higher tiers quoted individually. It also has a large Gulf South service footprint, which matters if you would rather call a named person than open a ticket.

Paylocity

Paylocity sits between small-business payroll and full HCM, aimed at companies that have outgrown basic payroll but do not want enterprise complexity. It publishes per-state tax facts including Louisiana, and the HR module covers performance, learning, and engagement. Pricing is quote-based and implementation is a project rather than a signup.

Rippling

Rippling sells a unified employee record where payroll, HR, and IT provisioning share one data model. The core platform is $35 per month plus $8 per employee, with payroll as a separate module. All-in costs land between $25 and $45 per employee per month once you assemble a working configuration.

What each provider actually costs a Louisiana employer

The table below models published rates at three headcounts, plus what happens when a second state enters the picture. That last column carries more weight in Louisiana than the state tax column does, because the state tax work is genuinely simple and the border is close to most of the population.

Patriot stays cheapest at every headcount, and at 50 employees it lands $92 a month under SurePayroll on the same headcount. Square sits close behind and pulls ahead for a tipped workforce, where the value is tip data flowing into the pay run rather than the subscription price. Gusto Simple is competitive until one out-of-state hire forces the Plus tier, taking a 25-person payroll from $199 to $380 per month.

How the Louisiana payroll calculation actually works

Anyone reaching for a Louisiana payroll calculator wants one of two numbers, and free tools rarely separate them. The first is employee net pay: gross wages, minus pre-tax deductions, minus federal withholding per the W-4, minus FICA at 7.65 percent, minus Louisiana withholding computed as wages less a prorated standard deduction times 3.09 percent. Nothing else comes out.

The second number is what a hire costs you: gross wages plus the employer FICA match at 7.65 percent, plus federal unemployment tax, plus state contributions on the first $7,000 of wages, plus workers compensation premium. A Louisiana payroll tax calculator that returns only the employee side understates a hire by roughly eight to eleven percent of wages.

Choosing a payroll provider for Louisiana

Louisiana removes most of the questions that dominate this decision elsewhere. Five remain, and four of them are about wages rather than taxes.

One item sits outside the payroll engine entirely. Every Louisiana new hire needs a federal I-9 and W-4, a Form L-4 most employers forget to hand over, direct deposit authorization, and a new hire report within twenty days.

Before you choose

FirstHR does not process payroll, file payroll taxes, or administer benefits. We do not calculate pay and we do not move money. Every provider above does something we do not, and if running payroll is the problem in front of you, one of them is the answer.

What we handle is the layer that feeds payroll: onboarding workflows, e-signatures on I-9s and offer letters, employee records, and HR document management for small US teams at a flat $98 to $198 per month. Several Louisiana obligations here are document problems rather than payroll problems: getting the Form L-4 signed before the first run, holding the separation paperwork the unemployment administrator asks for, and having a separation record with a date on it so the fifteen-day clock is visible.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Louisiana income tax rate for payroll withholding?

A flat 3 percent for taxable periods beginning on or after January 1, 2025, with no brackets and no local income tax in any parish or municipality. The graduated schedule that ran 1.85 to 4.25 percent no longer applies. Employer withholding, however, is computed with a formula that uses a slightly different rate.

Why do the Louisiana withholding tables use 3.09 percent?

Because the withholding formula and the tax rate are separate things. Form R-1306 states its formulas are based on a 3.09 percent withholding rate applied to wages less a prorated standard deduction, which builds a small cushion so employees are less likely to owe at filing. An employer does not choose between the two figures.

What is the Louisiana unemployment insurance wage base?

$7,000 per employee for 2026, down from $7,700, which puts the state base level with the federal unemployment tax base. Experienced rates run 0.09 to 1.94 percent for positive-rated employers and 2.2 to 6.2 percent for negative-rated ones. New employers get their industry average, floored at 1 percent and capped at 6.2 percent.

What is the Louisiana minimum wage?

Louisiana has no state minimum wage law, so federal $7.25 per hour is the only floor and it applies in all sixty-four parishes. Local ordinances have been preempted since 1997 under Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:642. There is no indexation and no scheduled increase to track.

How often must Louisiana employers pay employees?

Manufacturing, oil boring, and mining employers with ten or more staff, plus public service corporations, must pay at least twice per calendar month with paydays about two weeks apart under Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:633. Others have latitude on frequency but must disclose wages, method, and frequency at hire. Failing to designate paydays defaults to the first and sixteenth.

When is a final paycheck due in Louisiana?

On or before the next regular payday or no later than fifteen days following separation, whichever occurs first. That deadline is the same for a discharge and a resignation, which is unusual among states. Where the amount is disputed, the undisputed portion still has to be paid inside the same window.

What happens if a Louisiana employer misses the final paycheck deadline?

Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:632 exposes the employer to ninety days of wages at the employee daily rate, or full wages from the date of demand until payment, whichever penalty is lesser, plus attorney fees taxed as costs. A good faith dispute limits liability, but that exception is decided after the fact.

What are the Louisiana withholding filing and payment frequencies?

Quarterly under $500 of average monthly withholding, monthly from $500 to under $5,000, and semi-monthly at $5,000 or more. Everyone files Form L-1 quarterly: quarterly and monthly payers by the last day of the month after quarter end, semi-monthly payers by the fifteenth. Form L-3 reconciles the year with W-2s by January 31.

Is Form L-4 required for new Louisiana employees?

Form L-4, formally Form R-1300, is the Louisiana Employee Withholding Certificate and it carries the standard deduction election that determines which withholding formula applies. Collect it during onboarding alongside the federal W-4, because without it the first pay run is computed against an assumption rather than an election.

Does Louisiana have local payroll or income taxes?

No parish or city levies an income tax or a wage-based payroll tax. Local governments do levy an occupational license tax on businesses under Louisiana Revised Statutes 47:341, which a parish or municipality may impose only with the approval of two-thirds of the elected members of its governing authority after at least three public hearings. It is assessed on gross receipts, falls due annually, and is never withheld from wages. It is an accounting obligation, not a payroll one.

How do I register a business for Louisiana payroll taxes?

Two registrations with two agencies: a wage withholding account with the Department of Revenue, filed and paid electronically, and an unemployment insurance account with the Workforce Commission. Liability for unemployment begins at $1,500 of wages in a calendar quarter or one employee for part of a day in twenty different weeks. New hires are reported within twenty days.

Does Louisiana require paid sick leave?

No, and it has no paid family leave program or state disability insurance either. Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:642 also bars parishes and municipalities from mandating a minimum number of sick or vacation days, so no local ordinance fills the gap. One leave rule still touches payroll: state jury duty leave must be granted for up to one day without loss of wages under Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:965, with a fine of $100 to $500 for each offense on top of the wages owed.

Is there a Louisiana payroll calculator that gets the numbers right?

Most free tools labeled a Louisiana payroll calculator multiply gross wages by 3 percent, which is not the state formula. Use a Louisiana payroll tax calculator to budget the employer side of a hire, meaning FICA, federal unemployment tax, and state contributions on the first $7,000 of wages. Use the published formula or a payroll platform for actual withholding.

How much does payroll software cost for a Louisiana small business?

At 10 employees, published July 2026 rates run roughly $87 for Patriot Full Service, $89 for Paychex Flex Essentials, $95 for Square, $99 for SurePayroll, $109 for OnPay or Gusto Simple, and $115 for QuickBooks Core. At 50 employees the same plans land between $287 and $379. ADP RUN and Paylocity quote individually.