WV Payroll: Employer Tax and Software Guide

West Virginia payroll is not complicated, and if another founder asked me about it, I would say the rules are the easy part and the numbers are what to check. This guide covers what West Virginia actually requires, with each figure checked against the state source, and how 10 payroll providers price the work at 5, 15, and 50 employees.

There is no state disability program, no percentage-based local income tax, no unusual pay frequency statute, and the unemployment wage base is among the lowest in the country. On the list of states that are hard to run payroll in, this one sits near the bottom.

What it does have is a moving target. The state has cut income tax rates three times in four years, and the most recent cut landed in the middle of 2026 with retroactive effect to January. Reference material written before the change, including pages from established payroll vendors, can show rates that are no longer current.

Two other figures, the unemployment wage base and the new hire reporting deadline, also turn up in versions that are wrong for West Virginia: an old wage base and the longer deadline most other states use.

The rate change that broke the reference pages

Senate Bill 392 was signed March 31, 2026 and took effect June 12, 2026, cutting every income tax bracket by 5 percent retroactively to January 1, 2026, according to the West Virginia Tax Division. That combination of a mid-year effective date and a retroactive application is the reason material published before June can now be wrong.

Those brackets apply to individuals, joint filers, and heads of household. Married taxpayers filing separately use halved thresholds, with the top bracket beginning at $30,000. Employers should be running the revised IT-100.2.A percentage method or IT-100.2.B table method dated March 2026, and the value of a state withholding allowance stayed at $2,000, so only the rates moved.

The cuts may not be over. West Virginia embedded a revenue trigger in its 2023 reform: when general revenue exceeds a specified threshold, rates drop further without new legislation. Senate Bill 392 was a discretionary cut on top of that mechanism, and the trigger remains in place, so treat any West Virginia rate figure as current only until further notice.

What West Virginia actually requires from employers

West Virginia requires two registrations and two ongoing filings from employers, one pair for income tax withholding and one for unemployment insurance, plus a report on every new hire. There is no local income tax rate to withhold.

Registration and withholding

Withholding registration goes to the West Virginia Tax Division and unemployment registration to WorkForce West Virginia, and both can generally be handled through the state One Stop Business Portal in one pass. Employees complete Form IT-104, the state withholding exemption certificate, which is required separately from the federal W-4.

Unemployment insurance

Unemployment insurance is paid entirely by the employer through WorkForce West Virginia, on one of the lower wage bases in the country.

Older payroll guides may show a $9,000 wage base. That was the base in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's state unemployment insurance summary for that year, and using it now means under-collecting on every employee who earns more than $9,000. The WorkForce West Virginia Employer Handbook puts the base at $9,500 from 2025.

New hire reporting in 14 days

West Virginia Code section 48-18-125 requires reporting new hires within 14 days, and the WorkForce West Virginia Employer Handbook states the same. The penalty is up to $25 per failure, or up to $500 where the failure results from a conspiracy between employer and employee.

The six-employee rule that changes which minimum wage applies

The six-employee rule decides which minimum wage a West Virginia business pays: the state's own minimum covers only employers with six or more people at one location. The rate itself is unremarkable: $8.75 per hour, unchanged since January 1, 2016, with a tipped cash wage of $2.62 reflecting a 70 percent tip credit.

Under section 21-5C-1(e), the state minimum wage law does not apply to employers with fewer than six people employed during any calendar week at any one separate, distinct, and permanent location. Businesses below that line generally fall under the federal minimum of $7.25 instead, assuming Fair Labor Standards Act coverage applies.

Two practical consequences follow. First, the threshold counts by location rather than by company, so a business with four people at each of two locations is measured separately at each. Second, crossing from five to six employees at a single site changes the applicable minimum wage, a headcount-triggered change that a payroll system will not flag on its own.

House Bill 5485 proposed raising the state rate to $11.00 per hour from January 2027 but stalled in committee before the 2026 session ended.

10 payroll providers for West Virginia employers compared

Every provider below files West Virginia withholding and unemployment. Given the mid-year rate change, the first thing to ask any of them right now is which withholding tables they are actually running.

OnPay

OnPay sells one plan at $49 per month plus $6 per employee, with no tier to climb, though HR tools and time tracking cost extra. Tax filing covers all 50 states with no multi-state surcharge, which matters in a state that borders five others: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky. Year-end filing is included and the first month is free.

Gusto

Gusto pairs automatic tax filing and published pricing with onboarding built into the same account. The Simple plan runs $49 per month plus $6 per employee after a base increase during 2025.

The West Virginia catch is the border question. Simple covers single-state payroll only, and the northern panhandle sits minutes from Ohio and Pennsylvania while the eastern panhandle is within commuting distance of Washington.

A hire who adds a second state to the payroll moves the account to Plus at $80 plus $12 per employee. The second state can come from home-state withholding under a reciprocity agreement or from work done across the line.

Patriot Software

Patriot Software has the cheapest full-service plan in this comparison at every headcount modeled: $37 per month plus $5 per employee, covering federal, state, and local tax filing. New hire reports remain yours to file. Basic at $17 plus $4 calculates only and leaves depositing and filing to the employer.

For a small single-state West Virginia business, the savings start small and grow with headcount. Additional state filings cost $12 per month each, which eats into that advantage for anyone with staff across a panhandle border.

QuickBooks Workforce Payroll

QuickBooks Payroll Core became Workforce Payroll in a 2026 rename. It runs $50 per month plus $7 per employee after the per-employee increase of July 1, 2026, with federal and state tax filing on every tier. The reason to pick it is unchanged: if the books already live in QuickBooks Online, payroll entries land in the general ledger with no export step.

SurePayroll

SurePayroll is owned by Paychex and aimed at very small and household employers, at $29 per month plus $7 per employee. Its multi-state fee is a flat $9.99 a month however many states are involved, which suits an employer straddling a panhandle border, where two or three states can come into play at modest headcount.

Square Payroll

Square Payroll is full-service payroll at $35 per month plus $6 per person paid, with tax filing included. For a West Virginia restaurant or retail business already running Square point of sale, hours and tips flow into payroll with no integration work.

The tip feed matters here because the 70 percent tip credit requires the employer to top up whenever the cash wage plus tips falls short of $8.75, which needs accurate tip data every period.

Paylocity

Paylocity is a full HR and payroll platform aimed above the smallest end of the market: its clients average more than 150 employees, and it prepares and files state and local withholding returns as an IRS Registered Reporting Agent in all 50 states. Pricing is quote-only.

ADP RUN

Every ADP RUN package covers the full tax compliance cycle: calculating, filing, depositing, and reconciling payroll taxes. For a state undergoing repeated rate reform, that puts the table updates on ADP rather than on you, and ADP pays the resulting fines if it makes a filing error. ADP publishes no rates for its four packages, so every price starts with a quote.

Paychex Flex

Paychex Flex is a service relationship rather than a software subscription, with a payroll specialist included on the Complete package and sold as an add-on below it. Pricing is quote-only for all four payroll packages. The case for it in West Virginia is a person to ask when a mid-year rate change or an agency notice raises a question.

Rippling

Rippling puts payroll, HR, and IT provisioning on a unified employee record that shares one data model. Multi-state registration runs inside the same workflow, which is useful across five borders, but the platform is overbuilt for a small West Virginia business.

Rippling's pricing page lists no rates. Its small-business page starts payroll at $8 per user per month plus a $40 monthly base fee, and its blog prices the core platform at $8 per employee and domestic payroll at another $8 on annual billing, so configured quotes run higher.

What each provider actually costs a West Virginia employer

Among the plans in the table below, Patriot Full Service costs the least at every headcount for a single-state payroll, and QuickBooks Workforce costs the most. The table models published rates at three headcounts, plus the cost of adding a second state, which applies unusually often here.

Budget providers stay cheaper at every headcount, but the second-state column reorders the ranking: Gusto Simple is competitive until a hire who adds Ohio or Virginia withholding forces the Plus tier, at which point a 15-person payroll jumps from $139 to $260.

Choosing a payroll provider for West Virginia

Choosing a payroll provider for West Virginia comes down to four questions, and the first one is specific to this moment rather than to this state.

Before you choose

FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider. Payroll, payroll tax filing, and benefits administration come from the providers above, and if payroll is the problem you are solving, one of them is your answer.

What we handle is the paperwork layer that feeds payroll, and West Virginia gives it a specific deadline. The new hire report is due within 14 days of hire, which for someone who starts mid-cycle can fall before the first payroll run, and the report needs information that comes from onboarding paperwork rather than from payroll.

The I-9, the federal W-4, and the state IT-104 go on each new hire's first-day task list, and completed forms are kept in the employee file; the forms themselves are completed outside FirstHR. A task with a deadline in an onboarding workflow can carry the 14-day report, which goes to the West Virginia New Hire Reporting Center.

Offer letters and acknowledgments go out for e-signature, and employee records and document management come at a flat $98 a month for up to 10 people or $198 for 11 to 50.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the current West Virginia income tax withholding rates?

Five brackets from 2.11 to 4.58 percent following Senate Bill 392, effective June 12, 2026 and retroactive to January 1, 2026. The top bracket is $1,950.50 plus 4.58 percent of the excess over $60,000. Employers should be running the revised IT-100.2.A or IT-100.2.B tables dated March 2026.

Why do different sources give different West Virginia tax rates?

Because the state has cut rates three times in four years and the retroactive effective date means a page written in April 2026 could correctly show the old rates that day. The 2023 reform produced 2.36 to 5.12 percent, a 2025 cut produced 2.22 to 4.82, and Senate Bill 392 produced the current 2.11 to 4.58. Check the date on any figure.

What is the West Virginia unemployment wage base?

$9,500 per employee, per the WorkForce West Virginia Employer Handbook. New in-state employers pay 2.7 percent, out-of-state construction employers start at 8.5 percent, and experienced employers fall between 1.5 and 7.5 percent before surcharges. The $9,000 figure on older pages was the 2023 base.

How quickly must West Virginia employers report new hires?

Within 14 days of the hire date under Code section 48-18-125, with a penalty of up to $25 per failure and up to $500 where a conspiracy is involved. Twenty days is the common national figure but is wrong for this state.

What is the West Virginia minimum wage and who does it apply to?

$8.75 per hour with a tipped cash wage of $2.62 under a 70 percent tip credit. State law applies only to employers with six or more people at one separate, distinct, and permanent location; below that, the federal $7.25 generally applies. House Bill 5485, proposing $11.00 from 2027, stalled in committee.

Does West Virginia have local payroll taxes?

No local income tax in the percentage-of-wages sense. Several cities, Charleston among them, charge a city service fee on people working within city limits, a set dollar amount rather than a rate, and each city administers its own. Confirm the collection rules with the specific city.

Where do West Virginia employers register for payroll accounts?

Withholding with the West Virginia Tax Division and unemployment with WorkForce West Virginia, both generally available through the state One Stop Business Portal in one pass. Employees complete Form IT-104 separately from the federal W-4.

How much does payroll software cost for a West Virginia small business?

At 5 employees, rates published in October 2026 come to $62 for Patriot Full Service, $64 for SurePayroll, $65 for Square Payroll, $79 for OnPay or Gusto Simple, and $85 for QuickBooks Workforce Payroll. At 50 employees the same plans land between $287 and $400. ADP RUN, Paychex Flex, and Paylocity quote individually.