Hiring your first employee in Delaware

What do you have to register for before your first payroll?

Delaware's Combined Registration Application through One Stop opens your withholding account, your business license and your gross receipts tax account together. Unemployment insurance is separate, at the Department of Labor.

Does Delaware require income tax withholding?

Yes. You register with the Delaware Division of Revenue, before your first delaware payroll, via the combined registration application at one stop.

You need your federal EIN before you register, because Delaware assigns you the same number as your withholding account number. One thing that surprises new employers: every brand new withholding account starts out filing monthly, not quarterly, so the paperwork begins right away rather than at the end of the quarter. Delaware publishes no specific number of days to register, so treat your first payroll date as the real deadline.

What unemployment insurance does Delaware charge a new employer?

A new Delaware employer pays 1% on the first $14,500 each employee earns, so roughly $145 per employee in the first year. For 2026 a new Delaware employer pays 1.0% on the first $14,500 of each employee's wages. Both numbers move every year and they move a lot: the wage base was $10,500 as recently as 2024 and the new employer rate was 1.8% in 2022. Delaware is also replacing its whole unemployment tax structure in 2027 with eight schedules plus add-on rates based on industry and headcount, so do not assume this year's rate carries forward.

Do you need workers compensation insurance in Delaware?

Yes, from your first employee. Delaware sets no headcount to reach, so there is no free window before coverage is required.

Delaware gives you no free headcount: the law applies to any employment where one or more employees are engaged. A few narrow categories sit outside it, including farm labor, household workers earning under $750 in any three month period from one home, and genuinely casual work outside your regular trade. Sole proprietors and partners are not automatically covered but can elect in, while corporate officers and LLC members are covered unless they file a written exemption.

How quickly must you report a new hire in Delaware?

Within 20 days of the employee's date of hire. Reports go to the Delaware Division of Child Support Services.

This is a separate filing from your withholding registration and it is easy to miss, because it goes to the Division of Child Support Services rather than the Division of Revenue. A copy of the W-4 is an accepted way to send it. Delaware moved this to a new reporting website in 2026, so bookmarks and vendor instructions from earlier years may point at a dead page.

Does Delaware have paid family leave or state disability insurance?

Delaware Paid Leave began payroll deductions in January 2025 and started paying benefits in January 2026. The obligation turns on headcount: employers with 9 or fewer Delaware employees are exempt, those with 10 to 24 owe parental leave coverage, and those with 25 or more owe full coverage. Hiring your tenth Delaware employee therefore crosses a real threshold. Contribution percentages are not recorded here because they could not be confirmed on a primary page.

Do you need a sales tax permit in Delaware?

Delaware has no general sales tax, so there is no sales tax permit to apply for. That does not always mean nothing to register for, as the note explains.

There is no Delaware sales tax permit to apply for, because Delaware has no state or local sales tax. What catches people out is the gross receipts tax described below, which applies instead.

Does a marketplace like Amazon or Etsy handle the tax for you?

A marketplace facilitator law exists to make platforms collect a sales tax, and Delaware has none to collect. If you sell into Delaware through a marketplace, no platform is collecting Delaware tax for you and you pick up no Delaware filing duty from those sales.

If your sales drop, when can you stop collecting?

There is no sales tax and no economic nexus threshold to cross, so nothing trails. What can continue after you wind down is the Delaware side: a business license and gross receipts tax account stay open until you close them with the Division of Revenue, so tell them when you stop operating rather than just going quiet.

Does Delaware charge a tax on revenue rather than profit?

This is the trap in a state people choose for having no sales tax. It is paid by the seller rather than collected from the customer, and it is charged on total revenue with no deduction for cost of goods, labor or any other expense. You register by getting a Delaware business license through One Stop, generally $75 for a first location, obtained when business commences. Most businesses get a monthly exclusion starting around $100,000 of receipts and reaching $1,250,000, so smaller sellers often owe nothing while still being required to license and file.

Do you have to register your out-of-state company in Delaware?

The Delaware Code fixes the foreign LLC registration fee at $200. Corporations pay a base amount plus fees that scale with authorized shares, so there is no single figure; check the Division of Corporations fee schedule.

Delaware also requires you to appoint and keep a registered agent with a real street address in the state, an ongoing annual cost separate from this filing fee. Registering with the Division of Corporations does not license you to operate: the business license and gross receipts tax account from the Division of Revenue are a separate step.

Where these figures come from

Every number on this page was read on Delaware's own agency pages, its statute, or a current-year official form, and this record was last reviewed on 2026-09-08. Where a state's explainer page disagreed with its statute or its current form, we followed the statute or the form and said so in the relevant section, because a state's consumer-facing pages are often the last thing updated when a figure changes.

Anything we could not confirm on a primary source is left blank rather than estimated. A missing figure on this page means we could not verify it, not that it is zero.

This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and your circumstances matter. Confirm anything you are about to act on with the agency named beside it.