Employer guideRead at source September 28, 2026

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

Kansas employers must report each new or rehired employee to the Kansas Department of Labor’s New Hire Directory within 20 days of the hire, online, by mail to P.O. Box 3510, Topeka, KS 66601-3510, or by fax to 888-219-7798. The statute is worded as 20 business days, but the agency and federal law both say 20 days, so plan on 20 calendar days from the first paid day. Independent contractors are not reportable, and Kansas publishes no penalty.

Kansas collects new hire reports through the Kansas Department of Labor (KDOL), which runs the Kansas New Hire Directory under a contract with the Kansas Department for Children and Families. The rules are short: 20 days, the federal data list, no contractor reports and no published fine. The two details worth reading closely are the statute’s wording of the deadline and a rehire rule that reaches workers who never left the payroll. For the federal requirements and the rest of the country, see our new hire reporting requirements by state guide.

Kansas new hire reporting at a glance

Business days in the statute, 20 days on the agency page

K.S.A. 75-5743 tells employers and labor organizations to submit the information within 20 business days of the hiring, rehiring or return to work of the newly hired employee, or within 20 business days from the date the employee first receives wages. The KDOL new hire page describes the same duty as reporting within 20 days of the hire, and the federal law behind it sets an outer limit of 20 days after the date of hire.

Read together, the safe plan is the shorter one. Twenty business days can stretch to four weeks on the calendar, well past the federal limit and past what the agency itself publishes. Build the Kansas process to file within 20 calendar days of the first day of paid work, and treat the statutory wording as a detail rather than extra time.

What goes into a Kansas report

The statute requires the newly hired employee’s name, address, Social Security number and the date services for remuneration were first performed, plus the employer’s name, address and federal tax identification number, and anything else section 453A of the Social Security Act requires. The federal Office of Child Support Services state contact guide lists the Kansas items as:

• Employee name (first, middle and last), address, Social Security number and date of hire
• State of hire, required if you report as a multistate employer
• Employer name, address and FEIN
• Optional: employer phone number, fax number and email

Where to send it

KDOL’s Kansas New Hire Directory takes reports online, by mail and by fax. Contact details from the KDOL page:

• Mail: P.O. Box 3510, Topeka, KS 66601-3510
• Fax: 888-219-7798
• Phone: 785-581-7700 or 888-219-7801
• Email for questions: KDOL.NewHires@ks.gov

The KDOL page notes that the New Hire Directory has no access to specific child support information and cannot answer questions about child support cases. Child support payments run through the Kansas Payment Center, which is funded by the Department for Children and Families; its employer page points employers back to KDOL for new hire reporting.

Who uses a Kansas report

K.S.A. 75-5742 makes the Department of Labor the collecting agency and requires it to share the data with the Secretary for Children and Families, who uses it for eligibility verification and child support enforcement; section 75-5743 gives the Department for Children and Families access to match employee Social Security numbers against child support cases. The directory also passes the data to the National Directory of New Hires.

The first day of paid work

The Kansas statute measures from the hiring or the first receipt of wages, and it asks for the date services for remuneration were first performed. For frontline employers that means the first paid shift. When a CNA’s start is pushed from one week to the next because a background check came back late, the report date moves too. What trips employers up is an HR system that still holds the original start date and files against it.

Independent contractors in Kansas

Kansas does not require them. The federal state contact guide marks Kansas as not requiring independent contractor reporting, and the Kansas statute limits the duty to newly hired employees. Whether someone is actually an employee is a separate question that KDOL decides for unemployment tax purposes.

Penalties

Kansas has not published one. K.S.A. 75-5743 contains no fine, and the KDOL new hire page does not describe one. Federal law allows states to set a civil penalty, but Kansas has not used that option in the provisions we read.

Rehires, recalls and gaps in pay

The statute defines a newly hired employee as one not previously employed by the employer, or previously employed but separated for at least 60 consecutive days. KDOL applies it broadly: employers must report re-hires and employees who return after being laid off, furloughed, separated, granted leave without pay or terminated for 60 days or more, and it names teachers, substitutes and seasonal workers.

KDOL then adds a sentence that is easy to miss: employers must also report any employee who remains on the payroll during a break in service or gap in pay, and then returns to work. A seasonal worker kept on the books over the winter at zero hours is, on that reading, reportable when they return. KDOL does not say how long that gap must be, so ask the directory how it applies to your schedule. For school districts, landscapers and agricultural employers, the payroll status of a returning worker does not settle the question; the length of the gap does.

Reporting from more than one state

Under K.S.A. 75-5742, an employer that reports electronically or magnetically and is required to report new hires to more than one state may send all of them to one state by complying with the federal rules. That means registering with HHS and filing electronically; the full mechanics are on our multistate new hire reporting page. The same section tells the Secretary of Labor to delete directory information at least two years old each year, except data still needed for unemployment or workers’ compensation.

Hiring in Kansas

For the rest of the state’s employment rules, see Kansas labor laws and the Kansas minimum wage. Form I-9 requirements and our new hire forms checklist cover the federal first-week paperwork. Boostpoint runs social job ads for frontline roles; across our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark (891 Boostpoint-managed campaigns on Meta) the median campaign cost $13.88 per applicant, a national figure with no state split.

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