Employer guideRead at source September 28, 2026

Delaware New Hire Reporting: Deadline, What to Report and How to File (2026)

Delaware employers must report each new or rehired employee to the State Directory of New Hires within 20 days of the first day of paid work, online at the Delaware New Hire Reporting site or by fax to (855) 481-0047 or mail to the directory’s new address, PO Box 19, Ridgeland, MS 39158. Only governmental agencies must report independent contractors; other employers may. Under 30 Del. C. 1156A the fine is $25 per failure, or $500 per offense where employer and employee conspire.

Delaware’s State Directory of New Hires belongs to the Division of Child Support Services (DCSS) in the Department of Health and Social Services, and it is run under contract by YoungWilliams. The directory relaunched its website in April 2026 and now lists a new mailing address, so older instructions and payroll templates may carry the wrong one. Our new hire reporting requirements by state guide covers the federal rules and other states.

Delaware new hire reporting at a glance

Delaware’s new mailing address

On April 14, 2026 DHSS announced a modernized new hire reporting website built with YoungWilliams. The contact page now gives the mailing address as Delaware State Directory of New Hires, PO Box 19, Ridgeland, MS 39158, with phone (855) 481-0018 and fax (855) 481-0047. The federal Office of Child Support Services state contact guide, last updated for Delaware on March 22, 2025, still lists a PO box in Atlanta. If your payroll provider or a printed checklist sends Delaware paper reports to Georgia, update it.

What Delaware wants on each report

Required employer information, from the directory’s reporting instructions:

• Federal Employer Identification Number, the same one you use for quarterly wage reporting if you have more than one
• Employer name (the corporate name)
• Employer address, meaning where income withholding orders should be sent

Required employee information: full name (first, middle, last), mailing address, Social Security number, date of hire, and state of hire only if you report as a multistate employer. Optional: employer phone, contact name and email, and whether medical insurance is an employee benefit; employee state of hire, date of birth, wages and frequency of pay.

Filing options

• Online entry on the Delaware New Hire Reporting site, with a printable confirmation, available 24 hours a day.
• File upload in the directory’s fixed-width text layout, through the website, by SFTP, or on CD-R. The electronic reporting page asks employers to arrange a test read of a new file first.
• Paper: the Delaware New Hire Reporting Form, a printed list in at least 10-point type with the employer name, FEIN and address at the top, or a W-4 with the employer name, address and FEIN completed in the employer section. Fax to (855) 481-0047 or mail to the Ridgeland address above.

Payroll services can file for you, and the directory encourages it. What it asks in return is consistency: a different FEIN on new hire reports than on quarterly wage reports can make a compliant employer look non-compliant.

The 20 days, in Delaware’s words

30 Del. C. 1156A requires employers to notify the State Directory of New Hires within 20 days after the date the employer hires the employee, and it defines the report’s hire date as the date services for remuneration were first performed. Electronic filers may use two monthly transmissions, if necessary, not less than 12 nor more than 16 days apart. The directory adds that an employee must be reported even if they worked only one day and were terminated before the report was filed.

For frontline employers, the practical point is that the date is the first paid shift. A new hire whose orientation moves from Monday to the following Wednesday has a Wednesday hire date, and the report is due 20 days after that.

Independent contractors: a split rule

Delaware treats public and private employers differently. The directory’s FAQ says governmental agencies must report the independent contractors they hire, while all other employers may provide the same information on their contractors if they choose. The federal state contact guide records the same split. A private employer is not required to report 1099 workers.

Penalties under 30 Del. C. 1156A(d)

Delaware writes its fines into the tax code. An employer that fails or refuses to report a new hire is fined $25 for each failure or refusal. An employer or employee who conspires not to report, or to file a false or incomplete report, is fined $500 for each offense. A fine under the section may not be suspended, corporate liability follows the general criminal liability rules in Title 11, and the Family Court has jurisdiction.

In practice, the compliance page describes a notice process first: the federal Office of Child Support Services sends the state a quarterly report of employers that may not have reported all new hires, and the Center may mail notices to those employers.

Rehires, recalls and temps

Delaware publishes a threshold. Employers must report re-hires, meaning employees who return after being laid off, furloughed, separated, granted leave without pay or terminated for at least 60 consecutive days; the statute’s definition of a newly hired employee uses the same 60 days. Temporary agencies report a worker once, not at each placement, and again as a re-hire after a break in service or gap in wages. An employer that has never reported should start with employees hired in the last 180 days.

What Delaware does with the report

Under 13 Del. C. 2208, the directory must enter each report into its database within 5 business days of receipt and pass it to the National Directory of New Hires within 3 business days after that. DCSS matches the Social Security numbers against its child support case registry, and the Division of Unemployment Insurance and the Division of Industrial Affairs get access to check unemployment and workers’ compensation claims.

Multistate employers

Delaware’s multistate page recommends the single-state option for employers with staff in several states, which requires registering with HHS and reporting electronically. The costs and conditions are in our multistate reporting section.

Hiring in Delaware

The rest of Delaware’s employment rules are on our Delaware labor laws page, the wage floor on Delaware minimum wage, and the federal first-week checks on Form I-9 requirements. Boostpoint runs social job ads for frontline roles; in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark (891 Boostpoint-managed campaigns on Meta) the median campaign cost $13.88 per applicant, a figure the report does not split by state.

Frequently asked questions