Hiring your first employee in Missouri

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

Missouri gives you one online application but not one account. The registration at mytax.mo.gov applies to both the Department of Revenue and the Department of Labor in a single pass, so you fill in your details once, and the paper equivalent, Form 2643, does the same job. What comes back is two separate account numbers: a Missouri Tax I.D. Number from Revenue for withholding and sales tax, and an employer account number from the Division of Employment Security for unemployment. They live in different portals, mytax.mo.gov and UInteract, and they have their own filing calendars. Workers compensation is a third thing entirely, bought from a private insurer rather than registered with the state, so budget for one application, two tax accounts and one insurance policy.

Does Missouri require income tax withholding?

Yes. You register with the Missouri Department of Revenue, before your first missouri payroll. the employer's tax guide says every employer paying wages to an employee working in missouri must register, and sets no grace period; a transient employer must register and post its bond before beginning performance of any contract.

Two things catch out-of-state employers here. First, Missouri has no reciprocity agreement with any state, which the Employer's Tax Guide states in those words, so a neighbouring-state resident who performs services in Missouri has Missouri tax withheld on the Missouri portion of their wages with no exemption form to fall back on. Second, if you are not domiciled in Missouri and the work cannot reasonably be expected to continue for 24 consecutive months, you are a transient employer under section 285.230 and must file a cash bond, surety bond or irrevocable letter of credit with the Department before you start the contract. That bond is at least your average estimated quarterly withholding, never less than $5,000 and never more than $25,000. Failing to file it is a class A misdemeanour, adds a 25 percent penalty to any deficiency, and bars you from public works in Missouri for a year. On top of the state layer, St. Louis and Kansas City levy earnings taxes that never touch your state account.

What unemployment insurance does Missouri charge a new employer?

A new Missouri employer pays 2.376% on the first $9,000 each employee earns, so roughly $214 per employee in the first year. For 2026 a new Missouri employer pays 2.376 percent on the first $9,000 of each worker's wages, and unusually the same rate applies to mining and construction as to everything else, so there is no higher construction band to plan for. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit that elects to contribute pays 1.00 percent. Watch the wage base rather than the rate: it has fallen every year, from $11,000 in 2022 to $10,500, $10,000 and $9,500, and now $9,000 for 2026, so a figure carried over from last year overstates the tax. The published rate already includes the contribution rate adjustment, which the state raises or lowers with the trust fund balance, and long-term maximum-rated employers pick up surcharges of a quarter percent a year. You become liable as a general business employer once you pay $1,500 in wages in a calendar quarter or have a worker in any part of a day in 20 different weeks of a year, and you then have 30 days to tell the Division.

Do you need workers compensation insurance in Missouri?

Yes, once you reach 5 employees. Below that Missouri does not require it, but read the counting rules before assuming you are under the line, because who counts is rarely obvious.

• any employer with five or more employees
• construction industry employers who erect, demolish, alter or repair improvements, from one or more employees

Missouri is one of the few states where a small employer genuinely owes nothing here. Section 287.030 makes you an employer for workers compensation purposes only at five or more employees, so a business with one to four Missouri staff has no duty to carry a policy, and the Division says such an employer may elect coverage voluntarily instead. The exception swallows the rule for builders: a construction employer that erects, demolishes, alters or repairs improvements is covered from its first employee. Do not read the exemption as free money. An employer below five employees that declines coverage keeps its exposure to an ordinary civil suit from an injured worker, because it is outside the exclusive-remedy bargain. Getting it wrong the other way is worse: knowingly failing to insure when you are required to is a class A misdemeanour and carries a penalty of up to three times the annual premium you would have paid, or up to $50,000, whichever is greater, and a second offence is a class E felony.

How quickly must you report a new hire in Missouri?

Within 20 days after the date the employer hires the employee. Reports go to the Missouri Department of Revenue, which forwards reports weekly to the Family Support Division for the State Directory of New Hires.

Missouri routes this differently from most states. The report is a copy of the employee's completed Form MO W-4 and it goes to the Department of Revenue, which passes it to the Family Support Division weekly, so the tax agency is the front door even though this is a child support programme. You can file it online at the Missouri new hire reporting site instead of mailing the form. Report anyone you expect to pay earnings, and treat a returning worker as a new hire whenever they have to fill in a fresh W-4. Electronic filers may batch reports into two transmissions a month, between 12 and 16 days apart, rather than filing hire by hire. Penalties are small by national standards, up to $25 for an intentional failure, but rise to $350 for each report where employer and employee conspired to omit or falsify information. The statute is written around newly hired employees and does not extend the duty to independent contractors, which is the opposite of the rule in states like Ohio.

Does Missouri have paid family leave or state disability insurance?

No. Missouri 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.

Missouri has no state disability insurance fund and no paid family or medical leave programme, so there is no payroll deduction of that kind and no account to open. This changed twice in quick succession and stale guidance is everywhere. Proposition A, passed by voters in November 2024, created an earned paid sick time mandate that took effect in 2025. House Bill 567 repealed it, and the Department of Labor states that employers are no longer required to provide earned paid sick time beginning August 28, 2025, though they may keep offering it. The Revisor's own version history for section 290.603 shows the Proposition A text running only to that date. If you are copying a Missouri leave policy written in early 2025, it is describing a law that no longer exists.

Do you need a sales tax permit in Missouri?

Section 144.083 says the retail sales licence is issued at no cost to the licensee, so this is a confirmed free permit rather than an unknown, and the Department has ten working days to issue it once your application is complete. It does not expire; it runs until revoked or until you surrender it when you stop selling. Selling before you hold one is expensive in a way that compounds daily: $500 for the first day and $100 for each day after, to a maximum of $10,000. There is a second-order trap for anyone opening a physical location. A Missouri city or county may not issue or renew your local occupation licence unless you hand over a statement from the Department of Revenue that you owe no tax, dated within the previous 90 days, and if your state retail sales licence is revoked the local licence becomes null and void with it.

Security deposits. None for an ordinary registration. Bonds stopped being a condition of registering for sales or vendor's use tax on August 28, 2018, and the Department confirms this in its registration FAQs. It can still demand one from a licensee in default under section 144.087, capped at twice your average monthly liability over the previous twelve months, with release available after a year of clean compliance. A cash bond, an irrevocable letter of credit or a pledged certificate of deposit can all stand in for a surety bond.

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

Missouri came to this late. Section 144.752 requires marketplace facilitators engaged in business activities in the state to register and collect from January 1, 2023, and the duty covers sales made through the marketplace whether or not the underlying seller holds a Missouri retail sales licence of its own. So Amazon or Etsy handles the tax on what it facilitates for you. Two limits matter. The relief is practical rather than a stated statutory safe harbour: the section lets a facilitator and a seller agree in a contract who fulfils the chapter's requirements, so read the platform's terms rather than assuming you are covered. And it only reaches facilitated sales, so anything you sell through your own site or another channel is yours to collect and remit.

If your sales drop, when can you stop collecting?

Once you cross the threshold you are committed for at least a year. Section 144.605 requires a vendor that meets the test to collect and remit for a period of not less than twelve months, starting no more than three months after the close of the quarter in which it crossed, and to keep collecting as long as it is engaged in business activities in the state. Falling below $100,000 in the middle of that window does not release you. What the statute does not do is set out a clean exit: it describes no procedure for switching off once the twelve months are up and you no longer meet the test, so close the account with the Department rather than quietly stopping your returns, which is how businesses end up with non-filer notices.

Does Missouri charge a tax on revenue rather than profit?

Missouri levies no state gross receipts tax of the Washington B&O or Ohio CAT kind, and the corporation franchise tax that used to sit alongside income tax is gone: section 147.010 says no annual franchise tax is imposed for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2016. The cost that replaces it is local and is the thing businesses expanding into Missouri miss. Chapter 94 lets cities license and levy a tax on merchants, manufacturers and other corporations, and cities set the measure and the rate by ordinance, which in practice is often gross receipts. Separately, St. Louis and Kansas City are the only two Missouri cities allowed to levy an earnings tax, frozen in place by Proposition A in 2010 for cities that already had one on November 2, 2010, and section 92.111 reaches not just nonresident wages but the net profits of businesses conducted in the city by nonresidents. So a company with no Missouri office can still owe a city business tax on what it earns there. Add the certificate of no tax due from section 144.083 that you must produce before any city will issue your occupation licence.

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

Foreign LLC $105, stated on the face of Form LLC-4, the Application for Registration of a Foreign Limited Liability Company. Foreign for-profit corporation $155, the qualification fee on the Chapter 351 schedule, and unlike the domestic incorporation fee it does not scale with authorized shares. The $50 online rate on the fee schedule is for domestic LLCs only, so a foreign LLC pays the $105 paper figure. Foreign nonprofit corporations pay $25. Afterwards a foreign corporation files an annual registration report at $45 by paper or $20 online, while Missouri LLCs, domestic and foreign alike, file no annual report at all.

You need a Missouri registered agent with a real street address, and a foreign LLC must attach a certificate of good standing from its home state dated within 60 days of filing. Skipping this is not a paperwork nicety. A foreign corporation that transacts business without a certificate of authority cannot maintain a proceeding in any Missouri court until it gets one, and faces a fine of not less than $1,000; section 347.163 puts an unregistered foreign LLC in the same position. Qualifying opens no tax accounts, so withholding, unemployment, workers compensation and any retail sales licence are all still ahead of you.

Where these figures come from

Every number on this page was read on Missouri'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.