Hiring your first employee in Louisiana

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

Louisiana does not have one combined payroll account. Withholding runs through a Department of Revenue account and unemployment through a separate Workforce Commission account, handled independently. What Louisiana does offer is a shared front door: its business portal lets you file the entity with the Secretary of State, request the revenue account and apply for the unemployment account in one sitting. Treat that as one application covering three agencies, not as one account.

Does Louisiana require income tax withholding?

Yes. You register with the Louisiana Department of Revenue, when you employ one or more people at a salary of $375 per month or more, and only once you actually begin withholding.

Every employer with resident or nonresident employees performing services in Louisiana must withhold, so an out-of-state company with a single remote worker here is caught. Note the department's explicit warning not to open the account before you begin withholding, because an early account creates return filing obligations for periods when you had no payroll. That is unusual advice and worth following.

What unemployment insurance does Louisiana charge a new employer?

Louisiana does not publish one new employer rate, so the figure depends on your industry. You become liable once you pay $1,500 or more in wages in any calendar quarter, or have someone employed during part of a day in 20 or more separate weeks in a year. The 2026 taxable wage base is the first $7,000 per worker, and the Commission warns it can move with the trust fund balance. There is no single new employer rate to quote: a new employer serves a 24 month eligibility period charged at the weighted average rate for its own industrial classification, so two businesses hiring on the same day get different rates depending on their industry code. Any source quoting one Louisiana new employer rate is inventing it.

Do you need workers compensation insurance in Louisiana?

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

• all private employers with at least one employee, including part-time, temporary and seasonal workers

Coverage is required from the very first employee, with no headcount grace period, and part-time, temporary and seasonal workers all count. A short list sits outside the requirement, including certain domestic workers in a private residence and certain unincorporated farm workers. Going without is expensive: fines of up to $250 per employee for a first violation and $500 per employee afterward, capped at $10,000, with criminal exposure for willful violations.

Louisiana has no general opt-out. The narrow exception is ownership based: a business owner, or a corporate officer who owns at least 10% of the company, may exclude themselves from the policy by written agreement with the insurer. That covers only the owner, never the staff, so the policy itself still has to exist.

How quickly must you report a new hire in Louisiana?

Within 20 days of the employee's hire date. Reports go to the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.

New hires and rehires must be reported within 20 days. The rehire rule has a specific trigger that catches seasonal employers: report a returning worker once they have been separated for at least 60 consecutive days. This registry sits with Children and Family Services for child support enforcement rather than with the Workforce Commission, so it is a separate filing from your quarterly wage report.

Does Louisiana have paid family leave or state disability insurance?

No. Louisiana runs no state paid family leave fund and no state disability insurance, so there is no payroll deduction of that kind and no extra account to open.

Louisiana has no state paid family leave or temporary disability programme, so there is no payroll contribution to withhold. Do not be misled by the Paid Family Leave Insurance Act passed in 2026: it sits in the insurance code and simply creates a line of insurance that licensed carriers may sell to employers who want it. It creates no employer mandate, no contribution rate and no state administered benefit.

Do you need a sales tax permit in Louisiana?

Louisiana is the worst multi-jurisdiction sales tax trap in the country, because the local tax is not administered by the state. The local sales tax in each parish is collected by that parish's own collector, so a business with a physical presence registers with the state for its portion and then separately with the collector in every parish where it does business, filing a separate return to each. The escape hatch applies only to remote sellers with no physical presence: they register with one Commission and file one combined state and local return. Which side of that line you fall on is decided by physical presence, so hiring one employee or renting one warehouse can move you out of the single filing system and into parish by parish registration overnight.

Security deposits. No general bond or deposit is published for an ordinary sales tax account, though the Department does require bonds for fuel, tobacco and alcohol licences. Individual parish collectors set their own terms and can differ from the state.

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

The marketplace facilitator is the dealer for every sale made through its marketplace and remits state and local tax to the Commission on your behalf. The surprising part, which the Commission makes explicit, is that this holds even when the marketplace seller is physically located in Louisiana, because a marketplace sale is treated as a remote sale either way. The trap is mixed channels: the facilitator covers only the marketplace half, and you remain the dealer responsible for registering and remitting on your direct sales, which means parish by parish if you have physical presence.

If your sales drop, when can you stop collecting?

Louisiana's remote seller test keys off revenue or transaction counts in the previous or current calendar year, which implies obligations can carry into a following year, but neither the Commission nor the Department publishes a rule on how long collection duties continue after a seller falls below the threshold. There is no published fixed period and no published termination procedure. Because the answer is genuinely undocumented rather than merely hard to find, do not assume you can stop collecting and let the account lapse. Write to the Commission before you stop, and keep the reply.

Does Louisiana charge a tax on revenue rather than profit?

Louisiana has no gross receipts or business activity tax layered on top of sales tax. The related item worth knowing is that Louisiana's corporation franchise tax, a capital based tax rather than a receipts tax, has been repealed for franchise tax periods beginning on or after January 2026. Older guidance and vendor comparison tables still list it, so check the period you are filing for before you pay it.

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

IMPORTANT, these fees change. $150 for a foreign LLC and $125 for a foreign corporation for filings completed on or before 30 September 2026. From 1 October 2026 they rise to $185 for an LLC and $155 for a corporation. Expedited 24 hour processing costs an extra $30, and withdrawing later costs the same as qualifying.

Qualifying an existing out-of-state company is a separate filing from forming one here, and it is what a single Louisiana employee or a leased location usually triggers. You must attach a certificate of good standing from your home state less than 90 days old, so order that first because a stale certificate is the most common rejection. Louisiana charges the LLC MORE than the corporation, which is the reverse of most states, so do not carry a neighbouring state's figure across.

Where these figures come from

Every number on this page was read on Louisiana'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.