Employer guideRead at source September 28, 2026

Georgia New Hire Reporting: 10-Day Deadline, What to Report and How to File (2026)

Georgia employers must report each new hire, rehire or return to work within 10 days, half the federal limit, to the Georgia New Hire Reporting Center online at ga-newhire.com or by fax or mail. Independent contractors do not have to be reported. The penalty in O.C.G.A. 19-11-9.2 is a written warning, not a fine.

Georgia new hire reporting at a glance

Georgia runs a shorter clock than federal law. Federal law allows up to 20 days, as our national guide to new hire reporting explains; Georgia gives half that. The trade-off is that the statute's only stated consequence for missing it is a written warning.

Ten days from the hire: what counts

The statute reads: "Employers shall submit reports within ten days of the hiring, rehiring, or return to work of the employee." The Center applies the same 10 days to full-time, part-time and temporary staff. The federal data element that sets the date is the first day of work, the day the person first performs services for pay, not the offer or the day your applicant tracking system moved them to hired.

Ten days leaves little slack in a frontline operation. A home health agency that hires on a rolling basis and runs payroll every two weeks can easily see a new aide's first shift fall early in a pay period, so that by the time payroll processes the new record, the 10 days are nearly gone. The practical fix is to report from onboarding, not from payroll, or to file online the same week the person starts. For electronic filers the Center describes the alternative federal schedule of two monthly transmissions no more than 16 days apart.

What the Georgia report includes

Three lists apply, and they are not identical. The statute (19-11-9.2(c)) requires the employee's name, address, Social Security number and date of birth, and the employer's name, address and "employment security number or unified business identifier number." The Center's reporting fundamentals page lists these as required:

• Employer: FEIN (the same one used on quarterly wage reports), corporate name, and the address where income withholding orders should go.
• Employee: full name, mailing address, Social Security number, date of hire, and state of hire if you report as a multistate employer.
• Optional there: employee date of birth, and employer phone, fax, email and contact name.

The Center's FAQ and the federal Office of Child Support Services guide also list date of birth, medical insurance availability and state of hire among the items Georgia asks for. The practical answer is to include date of birth and health insurance availability every time: the statute names date of birth, and neither item costs anything to add.

How to file with the Georgia New Hire Reporting Center

• Online: register at ga-newhire.com to key in hires or transfer files. The site gives a printable confirmation and is available around the clock.
• Data files: upload through the site or send by SFTP to the Center's electronic specifications.
• Paper: the Georgia New Hire Form, a legible W-4 with the employer name, FEIN and address written at the top, or a printed list in at least 10-point type. The statute itself names mailing the employee's copy of the W-4 as an accepted method.

Fax paper reports to (888) 541-0521 toll-free or (404) 525-2983. Mail them to the Georgia New Hire Reporting Center, P.O. Box 3068, Trenton, NJ 08619. The New Jersey address is correct; it is the mailing address the Center and the federal state guide both publish for Georgia reports. Questions go to (888) 541-0469 or (404) 525-2985, Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern.

1099 workers in Georgia

Georgia does not require contractor reports. The Center's FAQ says it "welcomes Independent Contractor reports, however, the law does not require employers to report them," and the federal state guide lists Georgia as "No." The Center points employers to IRS rules for deciding who is really a contractor.

What happens if you miss the 10 days

The last sentence of 19-11-9.2(c) is the whole penalty provision: "An employer who fails to report as required under this Code section shall be given a written warning." Georgia has not adopted the $25 civil penalty that federal law allows states to impose. The Center's law page describes how enforcement works in practice: it receives a quarterly federal report of employers who may not have reported every hire, mails notices to those that appear non-compliant, and contacts employers whose regular reporting seems to have lapsed. A different FEIN on new hire reports and wage reports is a common trigger.

A light penalty is not a reason to skip the report. The data feeds child support withholding and unemployment fraud checks, and an employee's unreported job is exactly what those checks look for.

Rehires, recalls and seasonal returns

Georgia's statute sets no minimum gap. It covers "the hiring or return to work of any employee who was laid off, furloughed, separated, granted leave without pay, or terminated from employment." The Center adds recalled employees who stayed on payroll through a gap in pay, naming teachers, substitutes and seasonal workers. Its home page notice describes rehires as people returning after 60 days or more, but the statute and the reporting fundamentals page carry no such threshold. With a 10-day clock and a written warning as the only consequence, reporting every return is the simpler rule. Temporary agencies report a worker once, then again as a rehire after a break in service.

Multistate employers

If you have employees in several states and file electronically, you can register with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and send all reports to one state, which would take Georgia's 10-day deadline out of the picture for your Georgia hires. The Center links the federal registration form from its forms page; the registration steps are on our new hire reporting requirements page.

Hiring in Georgia

See our Georgia labor laws hub, the Georgia minimum wage page, and our guides to Form I-9 and E-Verify requirements by state. Boostpoint runs Facebook and Instagram job ads for frontline employers; in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark (891 Boostpoint-managed campaigns on Meta) the median campaign cost $13.88 per applicant in ad spend, a national figure with no state split.

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