Arkansas New Hire Reporting: Requirements, Filing, and Penalties

Employers in Arkansas must report every newly hired or rehired employee to the Arkansas New Hire Registry within 20 days of the employee’s first day of paid work.¹ The registry is maintained by the Division of Workforce Services and feeds into the National Directory of New Hires, which child support agencies use to locate parents subject to support orders.² Miss the deadline and the state can fine you up to $25 per unreported employee, rising to $500 when the employer and employee collude to avoid reporting. Arkansas new hire reporting applies to every employer of any size, including government agencies, labor organizations, and hiring halls.³

What Information You Have to Report

Each report needs seven data points. About the employee: full name, residential address, Social Security number, and the date they first performed services for pay. About the business: legal name, address, and Federal Employer Identification Number.³

The date of hire is the first day the employee actually works for pay, not the date they signed the offer or finished onboarding paperwork. The easiest way to meet the requirement is to submit a copy of the employee’s completed IRS Form W-4, since it already contains everything the registry needs.¹ Any equivalent form carrying the same fields is also accepted.

How to File

Arkansas accepts reports through three channels:

Online, through the Division of Workforce Services employer portal linked from the Arkansas.gov service page.⁴
By first-class mail to the Arkansas New Hire Registry, P.O. Box 2540, Little Rock, AR 72203. The postmark date counts as your filing date.
By fax, toll-free, to 1-800-259-3562.

Electronic filing is fastest and gives you an immediate confirmation. If you mail the report, send it early enough that the postmark falls within 20 days of the hire date.

Employers who file electronically or magnetically have another option. Rather than reporting each hire one at a time, they may batch reports into two monthly transmissions, spaced no fewer than 12 and no more than 16 days apart.¹ This works well for larger employers with steady hiring volume.

Who Counts as a New Hire

The reporting requirement covers W-2 employees. Independent contractors who receive a 1099 are not reported through this program.¹ If a worker fills out a W-4 and you withhold income tax from their wages, you have to report them.

Rehires count too, but only when the gap in employment has run at least 60 consecutive days. A seasonal worker who leaves in November and comes back in February clears that line and needs a fresh report. Someone who takes three weeks of unpaid leave and returns does not.

One narrow exception applies to federal or state employees performing intelligence or counterintelligence work: the agency head may decide not to report them if doing so could endanger the employee or compromise an operation.¹ For every private employer, the exception is irrelevant.

Penalties for Late or Missing Reports

Federal law authorizes Arkansas to fine employers up to $25 for each new hire that goes unreported, is reported late, or is reported with missing or wrong information.³ The penalty is per employee, so ten missed reports in a quarter can add up to $250.

The fine rises to as much as $500 per employee if the state finds the employer and employee conspired to skip the report or filed false information. Most enforcement lands in the $25 tier and traces back to sloppy onboarding rather than deliberate evasion. Adding the report to your standard first-day checklist is the cleanest fix.

Multistate Employers

If you have employees working in two or more states, you can designate one state to receive all your new hire reports instead of filing separately in each. The option is only open to employers who file electronically or magnetically, and you must have at least one employee actually working in the state you pick.⁵

You register with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in one of two ways: through the Office of Child Support Enforcement Child Support Portal at ocsp.acf.hhs.gov, or by emailing the completed Multistate Employer Registration Form to msedb@acf.hhs.gov. Registering satisfies the written notification requirement under federal law.

One point that trips employers up: registering as a multistate filer only chooses which state gets your reports. You still send the reports to that state’s registry directly, not through the OCSE portal.

What Happens After You File

Within two business days of your report entering the registry, the Office of Child Support Enforcement matches the new hire record against outstanding child support cases.¹ If there’s a match, the agency issues an income withholding order to you. That order is a separate legal obligation: you deduct the specified amount from the employee’s wages and forward it to the state disbursement unit. The new hire report itself stays confidential and is used only for child support enforcement.²

1
Justia. Arkansas Code 11-10-902 – Reporting Requirements – Enforcement of Child Support Obligations – Confidentiality – Definitions
2
Code of Arkansas Rules. 9 CAR 2-1202 – New Hire Reporting
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 653a – State Directory of New Hires
4
Arkansas.gov. Report New Hire or Re-hire
5
Office of Child Support Enforcement. Multistate Employer Registration Form for New Hire Reporting