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A Payroll Point lookup rarely returns a single tax. It returns every tax connected to the home and work locations, sorted into those you must act on and those that merely exist at those locations. Knowing which is which is the difference between reading a result correctly and over-withholding.

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Required versus additional

Results are split into two groups, and the distinction applies to both employee and employer taxes. A tax lands in the additional group for one of two reasons: it doesn’t apply given the residency, nexus, and reciprocity inputs, or it’s available for courtesy withholding but not mandatory.
Employer SUTA in multi-state scenarios. Payroll Point always shows the work location SUTA as required and the home state SUTA as additional. If an employee works across two states, check your company’s SUTA registrations to determine which one actually applies.

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Employee versus employer taxes

Each tax is flagged as an employee or employer tax.
  • Employee taxes are withheld from the employee’s pay and reduce net pay.
  • Employer taxes are remitted by the employer and do not affect the employee’s net pay.
Both groups carry their own required and additional lists, so a single result has up to four buckets.

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Resident versus nonresident

Every tax is marked resident or nonresident, showing whether it came from the home location or a work location. In single-location scenarios all taxes are resident. In multi-state scenarios the split is what tells you why a given state appears at all. See Required taxes.

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What the pay date changes

Every lookup takes a pay date, and Payroll Point determines taxes as they stood on that date. This matters in three ways:
  • Rates change on effective dates. A lookup for a January pay date can return a different rate than one for December, even at the same address.
  • Taxes start and end. New local taxes take effect and old ones are repealed. Each returned tax carries its own start and end date.
  • Boundaries change. Jurisdictions are created, dissolved, and redrawn, so the same address can resolve differently across dates.
Use the pay date of the payroll you’re running, not today’s date, when reconciling a historical or future pay run.

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Rates on a result

A returned tax carries a rate, or a rate type where the rate cannot be expressed as a single number. Graduated tables and employer experience rates both fall into that category, so the result tells you which applies rather than inventing a figure. See Tax rate types.
Payroll Point identifies the taxes that apply and their rates. It does not calculate withholding amounts. That’s the Symmetry Tax Engine, which Payroll Point calls behind the scenes.

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Where results appear

Portal global settings filter results before you see them. The Payer, Authority, and Tax withholding filters can each hide taxes that were returned. See Portal access and global settings.