Hiring your first employee in New Hampshire

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

New Hampshire has no single payroll registration, but it has fewer accounts to open than most states because two of the usual ones do not exist. There is no state income tax withholding account and no sales tax permit. What is left is: an unemployment account with New Hampshire Employment Security, which you open through Employer Registration and then use for both quarterly tax and wage reports and new hire reporting through the same NHES WebTax and New Hire Reporting system; a workers compensation policy bought from an insurance carrier, with the Department of Labor policing coverage through NCCI rather than selling it to you; and, only if you cross the filing thresholds, a Business Enterprise Tax and Business Profits Tax account with the Department of Revenue Administration through Granite Tax Connect. The mistake an out-of-state employer makes here is assuming that a state with no income tax and no sales tax has nothing to open at all. The unemployment account and the workers compensation policy are both mandatory, and the Business Enterprise Tax is measured partly by the payroll you pay to your New Hampshire staff, so hiring is exactly the act that can pull you into it.

Does New Hampshire require income tax withholding?

No. New Hampshire does not tax wage income, so there is no state withholding account to open and nothing to deduct from a paycheck for the state.

New Hampshire taxes no wage income, so there is no state withholding account, no state W-4 and nothing to deduct from a paycheck for the state. The Department of Revenue Administration states it plainly: the state does not have an income tax on an individual's reported W-2 wages. The one personal tax New Hampshire did have, the Interest and Dividends tax on investment income, has also gone. It stepped down from 5% to 4% for taxable periods ending on or after December 31, 2023 and to 3% for periods ending on or after December 31, 2024, and was repealed outright for taxable periods beginning after December 31, 2024. It never touched wages in any case, and it was a tax the individual filed, not something an employer withheld. You still withhold federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare as normal. Two traps follow. First, an employer moving a worker to New Hampshire often leaves the old state's withholding switched on and takes money the employee does not owe. Second, no withholding is not the same as no obligations: unemployment contributions, new hire reporting within 20 days, and workers compensation from the first employee all still apply, and the Business Enterprise Tax counts your New Hampshire payroll in its base.

What unemployment insurance does New Hampshire charge a new employer?

A new New Hampshire employer pays 2.7% on the first $14,000 each employee earns, so roughly $378 per employee in the first year. A new New Hampshire employer starts at 2.7% on the first $14,000 of each employee's wages in a calendar year. Both figures are on the NHES employer taxes page and the 2.7% and the $14,000 cap are also in the statute at RSA 282-A:69, I. The $14,000 is one of the more stable wage bases in the country and has not moved in many years, but the rate you actually pay is lower than 2.7% and changes by quarter. NHES applies a Fund Balance Reduction that is subtracted from the published rate whenever the trust fund is healthy: 0.5% off when the fund holds at least $250 million, 1.0% off at $350 million, 1.5% off at $400 million. The reduction has been 1.0% every quarter from the second quarter of 2023 through the second quarter of 2026, which makes the real new employer charge 1.7% rather than 2.7%. It is recorded at 2.7% here because that is the rate NHES publishes and the reduction can disappear in any quarter the fund falls. Check the Tax Rate Chart for the quarter you are actually paying. Note also that as of this review the chart's most recent row was the second quarter of 2026, so the third quarter figure was not yet posted. Three further points. You become liable, and must register, once you pay $1,500 or more in gross wages in any calendar quarter, or employ someone in 20 different weeks of the current or preceding year, or are liable for federal FUTA. You stay on the new employer rate only for your first period: merit rates are set once a year and run from 1 July to 30 June, with determination letters mailed in late August. And the net rate is split internally between an Administrative Contribution portion, capped at 0.4%, and the unemployment trust fund portion, which is an accounting split rather than an extra tax.

Do you need workers compensation insurance in New Hampshire?

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

• every employer with one or more employees, full or part time, including family members and including non-profits
• a corporation or LLC with 4 or more executive officers or LLC members, even with no other employees
• sole proprietors, partners and self-employed people are not required to cover themselves but may elect in, and a general contractor can require a sub to carry it anyway

New Hampshire gives you no free headcount. The Department of Labor's own answer is that under RSA 281-A:5 every employer who has any employees, full or part time, must cover them, and that it does not matter if they are relatives or if the business is a non-profit. The statutory definition of employer at RSA 281-A:2, VIII is anyone who employs one or more persons, and it explicitly counts people whose employment contract was signed out of state if they actually work in New Hampshire, which is the sentence that catches a remote hire. The Department also says coverage must be obtained before you hire anyone, not after. The one genuine exemption is for owner-only businesses: sole proprietors, partners and the self-employed need not cover themselves, and a corporation or LLC with 3 or fewer executive officers or members and no other employees is not required to carry it. The fourth officer or member ends that. Once a policy is in force or you have any employee at all, everyone including the officers and members is treated as an employee and covered automatically, and up to three of them may then elect out under RSA 281-A:18-a by giving the agent their name, date of birth, address and title. Calling someone a contractor does not settle it: RSA 281-A:2, VI sets the test, and the Department looks for a federal EIN and real control over how and when the work is done. Two extra duties travel with headcount rather than with the policy. At 15 or more employees, RSA 281-A:64 requires a written safety programme filed with the Commissioner and reviewed at least every two years, plus a joint loss management committee with equal numbers of employer and employee representatives meeting regularly, and non-compliance carries an administrative penalty of up to $250 a day. Failing to secure coverage at all can cost up to $2,500 plus up to $100 per employee per day, and whoever controls the payroll decisions can be held personally liable. There is no state fund: you buy from a licensed carrier.

How quickly must you report a new hire in New Hampshire?

Within 20 days of the hire, rehire or contract for services; employers reporting electronically or on magnetic media may instead send two transmissions a month, not less than 12 nor more than 16 days apart. Reports go to the New Hampshire Employment Security, New Hire Program.

New Hampshire is one of the states that makes you report independent contractors as well as employees, which is the single most missed obligation here. RSA 282-A:117-a, I requires an employing unit to report a new hire, a rehire, and the contracting for services with an individual, other than casual labour, where the payment is expected to exceed $2,500. NHES explains how to apply that to a mixed contract: only the labour or services portion counts, so a $3,000 contract split $1,000 labour and $2,000 materials is not reportable, while one split $2,600 labour and $400 materials is. You are not responsible for the contractor's own subcontractors, because the contractor reports those. The report goes to NHES, not to a separate child support agency, and it uses the same WebTax and New Hire Reporting system as your quarterly tax and wage report, so it is one login rather than two. A copy of the W-4 is an accepted format. Report anyone who quits before the report falls due, and report minors and people with no children, because the point is the state directory rather than any particular case. A multi-state employer that files electronically may designate a single state for all its reports, but if it designates New Hampshire it must then include every independent contractor over $2,500 whether or not the work is done here, which most other states do not ask for. Penalties are modest but real: up to $25 for each new hire not reported, rising to up to $500 each where the employer conspired with the worker not to report.

Does New Hampshire have paid family leave or state disability insurance?

No. New Hampshire 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.

New Hampshire has no mandatory state paid family leave programme and no state disability insurance, so there is no payroll tax to withhold for one and no employer contribution you are compelled to make. What it has instead is a state-sponsored voluntary insurance plan, the Granite State Paid Family Leave Plan under RSA 21-I:99 and RSA 282-B, which the state itself calls the first voluntary PFML plan in the nation. The state bought a group policy for its own employees and used that purchasing power to make the same MetLife product available to every other New Hampshire employer and worker at a negotiated price. Buying it is optional. The benefit is 60% of average weekly wage up to the Social Security wage cap for up to six weeks a year. The employer carrot is a Business Enterprise Tax credit worth 50% of the premium the employer pays, under RSA 77-E:3-e, and that credit only applies to the plan bought through MetLife, not to an equivalent policy from another carrier. No contribution rates are published here because none exist as a fixed figure: group premiums are individually underwritten from your census, the plan you pick, how much of the cost you share with workers and any short-term disability policy you already carry. The only number fixed in law is the ceiling on the individual plan, which RSA 21-I:103, III caps at $5 per subscriber per week. There is one duty that is not optional and it is easy to miss. Under RSA 282-B:3, II, a private employer with more than 50 employees whose workers individually opt into the state purchasing pool must run their premiums through payroll deduction and remit them to the department. So an employer that declines to sponsor coverage can still end up with a payroll deduction to administer, purely because an employee bought the individual plan. Employers must have a physical location in New Hampshire to be eligible for the plan at all.

Do you need a sales tax permit in New Hampshire?

New Hampshire 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 New Hampshire sales tax permit to apply for, because there is no state or local sales or use tax. The legislature said so in its own words in RSA 78-E:1, II, which records that the state imposes no traditional broad-based sales and use tax on purchases made here or on goods bought out of state for use here, and that it does not require New Hampshire businesses to build the administrative systems such a tax needs. The Department of Revenue Administration issues only three licences, and none of them is a sales tax permit: the Meals and Rooms (Rentals) operator's licence, the tobacco tax certificate, and the communications services retailer's licence. What replaces the sales tax for most sellers is the Business Enterprise Tax described below. Two narrower taxes catch specific businesses. If you serve prepared meals, provide sleeping accommodation of any kind including a short-term rental, or rent motor vehicles, RSA 78-A:4 requires an operator's licence before you open, one per location, posted on the premises, and a short-term rental advertisement must show the licence number. That licence expires on 30 June of each odd-numbered year and must be renewed, and DRA will not issue or renew it while you owe it any tax. Neither RSA 78-A:4 nor the DRA licence page states a fee for it, so no amount is recorded here rather than an assumed zero. The Meals and Rooms rate is 8.5%, in force since 1 October 2021. Separately, a communications services retailer needs its own licence from DRA.

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

A marketplace facilitator law exists to make a platform collect a sales tax, and New Hampshire has no sales tax to collect. Selling into New Hampshire through Amazon or Etsy therefore creates no New Hampshire collection duty for the platform and none for you, and there is no economic nexus threshold here to cross. New Hampshire does have facilitator rules inside its Meals and Rooms tax, which are a different thing but worth knowing if you list property or vehicles: RSA 78-A:3 pulls a room facilitator and a rental facilitator into the definition of operator, and RSA 78-A:7 makes the facilitator, rather than the owner, demand, collect and remit the 8.5% tax where it booked the stay or the rental. The state also legislated in the other direction, to protect its own sellers. Under RSA 78-E:4, a taxing authority from another state must give the New Hampshire Department of Justice 45 days of written notice, by physical letter, before it takes any step to impose sales or use tax liability on a New Hampshire remote seller, and it may not demand customer transaction information before that period runs. Do not read that as immunity. It is a notice and privacy requirement on the other state, not a shield against a genuine economic nexus obligation you have incurred there, and a New Hampshire seller that crosses another state's threshold still owes that state's tax.

If your sales drop, when can you stop collecting?

There is no sales tax, no permit and no economic nexus threshold, so nothing trails after you stop selling into New Hampshire. What can continue is the New Hampshire side of your own registrations, and each has to be closed deliberately. A Business Enterprise Tax or Business Profits Tax account stays open until you close it with the Department of Revenue Administration; a Meals and Rooms operator's licence runs to 30 June of the next odd-numbered year unless the business ceases or ownership changes; an unemployment account with NHES stays live until it is terminated under RSA 282-A:99 to 282-A:102; and a foreign registration with the Secretary of State runs until you file a certificate of cancellation or surrender the certificate of authority, with the $100 annual report due every year in the meantime.

Does New Hampshire charge a tax on revenue rather than profit?

This is the tax that stands where a sales tax would be in another state, and for an employer it behaves much more like a payroll tax than like a tax on profit. The base, called the enterprise value tax base and defined at RSA 77-E:1, IX, is the sum of all compensation paid or accrued, all interest paid or accrued, and all dividends paid. Compensation is usually the largest of the three, so the tax lands on you whether or not the business made any money, which is why a loss-making company with staff can owe Business Enterprise Tax and no Business Profits Tax in the same year. It is paid by the business and never collected from a customer. For a multi-state employer the compensation part of the base is apportioned to New Hampshire by the share of total payroll paid for services performed here, under RSA 77-E:4, I(a)(2), so one New Hampshire employee puts that employee's pay into the New Hampshire base. Read the threshold carefully, because it is a filing trigger and not an exclusion. For taxable periods beginning on or after 1 January 2025 you must file if gross receipts from all activities exceed $298,000 or if the enterprise value tax base exceeds $298,000, and once you are over, the tax is computed on the whole apportioned base rather than on the excess. It is a cliff, not a deduction of the first $298,000. The threshold is adjusted every two years by the Northeast urban CPI, so $298,000 covers 2025 and 2026 and a new figure is due for periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027; it was $281,000 for 2023 and 2024 and $250,000 before that. Estimated payments in four instalments are required once the estimated liability exceeds $260. Business Enterprise Tax paid is a credit against the Business Profits Tax, which is 7.5% of taxable business profits for periods ending on or after 31 December 2023 with its own separate filing threshold of $109,000 of gross business income for periods beginning on or after 1 January 2025, and unused Business Enterprise Tax credit carries forward ten years. New Hampshire also charges a communications services tax and a 8.5% meals and rooms tax, but neither is a general receipts tax on business.

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

$100 either way, which is unusually simple. An LLC files Form FLLC-1, Application for Foreign Limited Liability Company, and the $100 is fixed in the statute at RSA 304-C:191, II(h) as well as on the fee page; a professional LLC uses Form FPLLC-1 at the same price. A corporation files Form 40, Application for Certificate of Authority for a Foreign Corporation, or Form 40PC for a professional corporation, also $100. Filing online adds a $2 electronic handling charge under RSA 5:10-a.

New Hampshire dropped one of the usual irritations here. Since 1 November 2023, both RSA 293-A:15.03 for corporations and RSA 304-C:175 for LLCs ask only for an affirmation that the entity is in good standing in its home jurisdiction, so you no longer have to order a dated certificate of existence from your home state and race its expiry date, as Tennessee and many others still require. You do need a registered agent with a New Hampshire registered office named in the application. Budget for the recurring cost: qualifying puts you in the annual report cycle at $100 a year for both LLCs and corporations, filed between 1 January and 1 April, with a $50 late fee and a $135 reinstatement fee if the entity lapses. A foreign corporation that gets its certificate of authority between 1 December and 1 April skips the report for that year under RSA 293-A:16.22(c). Two things are worth understanding about what registration does and does not do. Registering with the Secretary of State is not a tax registration: the Business Enterprise Tax and Business Profits Tax accounts are separate, at the Department of Revenue Administration through Granite Tax Connect. And qualification and tax nexus are decided independently. RSA 293-A:15.01(b) lists activities that do not amount to transacting business, including selling through independent contractors, soliciting orders that are accepted out of state, merely owning property, and an isolated transaction completed within 30 days, but RSA 293-A:15.01(d) and RSA 304-C:174, III both say in terms that nothing in those lists prevents a finding that you are carrying on business activity within the meaning of the Business Profits Tax. In other words, you can be below the line for the Secretary of State and above it for Revenue. Trading here without a certificate of authority does not void your contracts, but it bars you from bringing a case in a New Hampshire court until you register, and you become liable for all the fees and penalties you would have paid had you registered when you should have.

Where these figures come from

Every number on this page was read on New Hampshire'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.