Hiring your first employee in West Virginia

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

One application at the One Stop Business Portal, business4.wv.gov, feeds the Secretary of State, the Tax Division and WorkForce West Virginia, and the Tax Division states in its own business tax publication that when a business registers with it, it passes the information to WorkForce West Virginia. So the entity filing, the tax accounts and the unemployment account can be started in one sitting, which is genuinely better than most states. Two things are still not covered. Workers compensation is bought from a private insurer, so there is no state account to open at all. And nothing in the state portal registers you with a West Virginia city, which is where the two costs that catch out-of-state employers live: the municipal business and occupation tax on gross receipts, and the flat weekly city service fee you have to withhold from anyone who works inside certain city limits. Budget for the state portal plus an insurance policy plus one registration per city your people actually work in.

Does West Virginia require income tax withholding?

Yes. You register with the West Virginia Tax Division, before you begin business activity in west virginia. the statute and the tax division both say before commencing, not within a number of days after, so there is no grace period to rely on..

Any employer paying wages subject to West Virginia personal income tax withholds and remits, and an out-of-state employer is caught the moment it has someone working in the state. Withheld tax is due by the 15th of the following month, the quarterly return by the last day of the month after quarter end, and the year end reconciliation on Form WV/IT-103 with the W-2s by 31 January. If you withhold less than $600 a year you file the annual WV/IT-101A instead and skip the IT-103. Two things soften the load. West Virginia has reciprocal agreements with Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, so a bona fide resident of one of those states working in West Virginia has nothing withheld here, though you must still hold a Form WV/IT-104 for them, and a nonresident who works 30 days or fewer in West Virginia, in more than one state, and is not an athlete, entertainer or public figure is outside withholding provided their home state has a similar exclusion or no income tax. Note one conflict on electronic filing: the code section on the Legislature's own site still reads 25 or more employees and the 2025 bill amending that section did not touch the figure, but the Tax Division's current employer publication and its 2025 electronic filing specifications both say 10 or more for periods beginning after 31 December 2024. Treat 10 as operative, because the Tax Division assesses the $25 per return penalty. It rarely matters in practice, since using any payroll service triggers the requirement whatever your headcount. Now the part that has nothing to do with your state account and is the real West Virginia trap: city service fees. Under W. Va. Code 8-13-13 a municipality may charge users of its services a flat fee, and many West Virginia cities apply that to everyone who works inside the city limits. It is a fixed number of dollars per person per week, not a percentage, so it does not scale with pay and does not show up as a rate anywhere in payroll. The employer withholds it and remits it to the city, normally quarterly, on the city's own return, and none of it runs through your Tax Division account. Amounts read on the cities' own pages: Huntington $5.00 a week, Charleston $3.00, Morgantown $3.00, Parkersburg $2.50, Wheeling $2.00. The mechanics are what catch people. Charleston's own handbook says there is no minimum number of hours, all part-time employees pay, no proration is allowed, and the fee keeps running while an employee is on paid leave or vacation. Charleston also answers the remote work question directly: someone permanently assigned to work from home inside Charleston for an employer based outside Charleston is covered and that employer must withhold and remit, while someone working from home outside Charleston for a Charleston employer is not. So one remote hire in the wrong postcode creates a city registration and a quarterly city filing for a business with no other West Virginia presence. Huntington extends the same logic to contractors: a contractor working inside the city limits owes the fee for every employee present on a site for each week they work. Being exempt from a city's business and occupation tax does not exempt you from withholding the fee. There is no state list of which municipalities charge one, so check the ordinance of every city your West Virginia people actually work in.

What unemployment insurance does West Virginia charge a new employer?

A new West Virginia employer pays 2.7% on the first $9,500 each employee earns, so roughly $257 per employee in the first year. A new West Virginia employer that did not buy an existing business pays 2.7 percent, and stays there for three years before it can be rated on its own experience. The exception is the one an expanding contractor will hit: an out-of-state business engaged in construction starts at 8.5 percent, more than three times the ordinary entry rate, so a builder crossing the state line should price that in rather than assume it carries its home rate. If you buy a West Virginia business you inherit that business's rate rather than starting fresh. The taxable wage base is $9,500, and unusually this one is not a moving target: the Legislature wrote $9,500 into the definition of wages in the code effective 1 July 2024, replacing the indexed figure that had produced $9,521 for 2024, and WorkForce West Virginia's employer handbook says plainly that beginning in 2025 the base is $9,500. So the base should hold from year to year until the Legislature changes it, which is a real difference from states that reindex every January. Rates still move annually and rate notices go out by the end of December. Register at business4.wv.gov. An employer that files no reports for three fiscal years is rated delinquent at 7.5 percent. Domestic employment is outside the system if you pay each household worker less than $1,000 a quarter.

Do you need workers compensation insurance in West Virginia?

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

• all persons, firms, associations and corporations regularly employing another person or persons to carry on any form of industry, service or business in the state, which is coverage from the first regular employee with no headcount floor
• the state, its political subdivisions, county boards of education, volunteer fire departments and other emergency service organizations

West Virginia used to run a monopolistic state fund and no longer does. Since privatisation took effect the market is open, the Insurance Commissioner reports over 350 carriers writing West Virginia workers compensation, and you buy a policy the ordinary way. There is no state account to open and no state application fee, which is the opposite of Ohio next door. Premium depends on payroll and classification, so no single rate can be quoted. Two duties are easy to miss. You must post a premises notice naming your carrier, and if you stop carrying coverage the Insurance Commissioner posts a written notice at your works telling your employees you are in default and that you are liable to them both for workers compensation benefits and in damages at common law. That second half is the expensive part: going uninsured does not just risk a fine, it strips the exclusive remedy that workers compensation buys you and exposes you to being sued directly. The Commissioner also works with other state agencies to revoke licences of noncompliant employers.

There is no general opt-out. Specific employers listed in the statute are not required to buy coverage and may elect it instead: employers of domestic workers, employers of five or fewer full-time agricultural workers, churches, organized professional sports, employers whose people work outside the state other than temporarily, and casual employers, meaning three or fewer employees on work that is temporary, intermittent and sporadic and does not exceed 10 calendar days in a calendar quarter. Separately, a partnership, sole proprietorship, association or corporation may elect not to count its own owners, partners or the four named corporate officers as employees, and a limited liability company may exclude up to four managers, officers or members. An employer that believes it is exempt applies to the Insurance Commissioner for a letter of exemption, and the workers compensation rule sets a $25 processing fee for that application.

How quickly must you report a new hire in West Virginia?

Within 14 days of the date of hire, rehire or return to work, and for an independent contractor within 14 days of first contracting for or paying $2,500 or more in aggregate in a year. Reports go to the West Virginia Bureau for Child Support Enforcement, West Virginia New Hire Reporting Center.

Fourteen days, not the 20 that several neighbouring states allow, so a habit carried in from elsewhere will run late. The duty covers anyone who resides or works in West Virginia, and it reaches independent contractors once the contract or the payments reach $2,500 in aggregate in a year, which is the part most businesses miss because nothing about a contractor feels like a hire. Reports go to the Bureau for Child Support Enforcement through the New Hire Reporting Center, a separate channel from anything you did at the Tax Division or WorkForce West Virginia. If you report electronically you may switch to two transmissions a month instead, not less than 12 nor more than 16 days apart. Failing to report costs up to $25 per failure, rising to $500 where the employer and the worker agreed not to report. The provision worth knowing if you employ in several states: an employer with employees in more than one state that reports electronically may designate a single state to report all of them to under 42 U.S.C. 653A, and if you designate elsewhere you do not report to West Virginia at all.

Does West Virginia have paid family leave or state disability insurance?

No. West Virginia 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.

West Virginia runs no state disability insurance and no state paid family and medical leave programme, so there is no payroll deduction of that kind and no further account to open. The Tax Division's employer withholding publication and its business tax booklet describe only state income tax withholding, and the state's own list of the other payroll obligations that sit outside it names unemployment tax and workers compensation, not a leave or disability levy. If you already run payroll in California, New York, New Jersey or Delaware, drop that deduction for your West Virginia people. Confidence is S rather than P because this is the absence of a programme, which no single page states outright.

Do you need a sales tax permit in West Virginia?

West Virginia has no separate sales tax permit. The one document is the business registration certificate, and the $30 is the business registration tax set by W. Va. Code 11-12-3, which the Tax Division confirms on the current WV/BUS-APP and in its business registration procedures publication. Three details change the number for real businesses. The fee is per fixed business location, not per business, so several West Virginia locations means several certificates and several $30 payments. The certificate has been permanent since 1 July 2010, so there is no renewal and no recurring state fee, and you pay the $30 again only if the certificate lapses or is revoked and you have to be reissued. And the current BUS-APP carries a genuine exemption the statute does not spell out: a withholding only account, for an employer that has West Virginia employees but does no revenue generating activity in the state, pays no registration tax, alongside charitable organisations, government agencies and farming. So a pure remote hire costs nothing to register at state level, while a business selling into West Virginia pays the $30. Registering late is not cheap: the Tax Division cites fines of $1,000 to $10,000 for operating without a business licence plus $100 a day after 30 days. Also budget for municipal sales tax. A growing number of West Virginia cities levy up to 1 percent on top of the 6 percent state rate, collected by the Tax Division on Schedule M of the same return but sourced to the buyer's address, so it is your job to get the address right.

Security deposits. No general security deposit or bond is required of an ordinary seller. Bonds are demanded only from named categories: a transient vendor must post $500 and a collection agency a $5,000 surety bond for each West Virginia location. There is no open-ended deposit power of the kind California and Texas hold over a new registrant.

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

Since 1 July 2019 a marketplace facilitator or referrer is treated as the seller for everything it facilitates and is deemed the agent of the marketplace seller, so the platform collects and remits West Virginia tax on those sales and you do not. The threshold that turns the duty on is the same for the platform, the referrer and a plain remote seller: $100,000 in gross revenue from West Virginia sales, or 200 or more separate transactions, measured over the preceding calendar year or the current one. The limit is the usual one. Only facilitated sales are covered, so anything you sell through your own site or another channel is yours to collect on, and those direct sales are what you measure against the threshold. Separately, and this is the West Virginia specific trap, having the platform collect for you does not excuse you from holding a business registration certificate: the Tax Division states that all remote sellers are required to register and that an exception to taxation is not an exemption from registration.

If your sales drop, when can you stop collecting?

The statutory test looks at West Virginia sales for the immediately preceding calendar year or the current calendar year, so a year in which you cross $100,000 or 200 transactions pulls the following year in with it. Dropping under the threshold in November does not let you stop collecting in December, and it does not let you stop on 1 January either, because the preceding year still qualifies you. Your registration is separate again: the business registration certificate is permanent until you close it or the Tax Commissioner cancels it, so tell the Tax Division when you genuinely stop selling into West Virginia rather than filing zero returns forever. A sales and use tax return is due even for a period in which you collected nothing.

Does West Virginia charge a tax on revenue rather than profit?

Read this block even though hasTax is false. West Virginia's own business and occupation tax survives only for public utilities, electric power generators and natural gas storage operators, so a normal business expanding into the state will not pay it. What will hit you is the municipal version, and the Tax Division describes it in its own current business tax publication as the major source of revenue for most West Virginia cities: a broadly based tax on the privilege of engaging in business inside the municipality, measured on gross receipts with no deduction for the cost of doing business, at rates that vary by activity and by city. It is the same shape as Virginia's BPOL, and it is the single most expensive surprise for a business moving into West Virginia, because it is charged on revenue whether or not you made a profit and you cannot bill it separately to the customer. You do not have to be based in the city to owe it. Charleston's rule, which is typical, is that a business domiciled outside the city limits is doing business in the city if it leases property to lessees there, performs construction or installation contracts there, renders services to others there, or sells and delivers goods to people inside the city, irrespective of where it is domiciled and whether it keeps a permanent place of business in the city. Charleston also requires its own business registration separate from the state's, charges an annual licence fee that varies by activity and location, wants quarterly returns even when there is no income, and requires the licence to be renewed by 30 June each year. No amount is published here for that licence fee because it depends on the classification and no single figure applies. There is no state list of which cities levy a B&O and at what rates, so contact each city you will do business in before you start.

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

Read on the current Secretary of State forms: Form LLF-1, application for certificate of authority of a limited liability company, revised 12 June 2026, states a filing fee of $150, and Form CF-1, application for certificate of authority for a corporation, revised July 2026, states $100 for a for profit corporation and $50 for a non-profit. The fees do not scale with authorised shares. A corporation owning more than 10,000 acres of West Virginia land adds 5 cents an acre for the excess. Registration is free for a qualifying veteran owned entity.

You must file a certificate of existence or good standing from your home state dated in the current tax year with the application, so allow time to obtain that first. West Virginia is genuinely cheaper than most states on the ongoing side, and this is the part worth knowing: the current CF-1 form says the agent for service of process need not have a West Virginia address, and the field is optional, so unlike Ohio or most neighbouring states you are not forced to buy a commercial registered agent with an in-state street address. Changing that agent or your officers later costs $15 on Form AAO. Expedite is $25 for next business day, $250 for two hours and $500 for one hour, on top of the filing fee. Both foreign LLCs and foreign corporations then owe a $25 annual report to the Secretary of State each year after registration. Qualifying with the Secretary of State opens no tax accounts: the Tax Division says explicitly that corporate registration with the Secretary of State is not a substitute for a business registration certificate, so withholding, sales tax, unemployment and every city registration are still ahead of you.

Where these figures come from

Every number on this page was read on West Virginia'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.