Introduction to Payroll Point

Symmetry Payroll Point (PRP) identifies and accurately determines complex state and local taxes based on an employee’s work and home addresses. Give it two addresses and a date, and it tells you every tax that applies and at what rate.

How a lookup works

To return the correct taxes and rates, Payroll Point does four things:

Validate the addresses

Each work and home address is normalized and validated against official postal data.

Geocode to coordinates

The validated address is converted to an exact latitude and longitude, aiming for rooftop accuracy.

Match against tax boundaries

Those coordinates are applied to 35,000 geospatial tax boundary shapefiles to determine every jurisdiction the location falls inside.

Return applicable taxes

Payroll Point calls the Symmetry Tax Engine and returns all applicable federal, state, local, and employer taxes and rates.

Because determination starts from coordinates rather than a ZIP code, a location can be matched to jurisdictions whose boundaries don’t follow postal lines: school districts, Ohio JEDDs, Pennsylvania municipalities, and transit or development districts. See Tax jurisdictions.

What you get back

Returned	Detail
Federal taxes	Returned on every lookup, since federal withholding does not vary by address.
Employee taxes	State and local taxes the employer must withhold for the scenario, plus additional taxes that exist at either location. See Tax results.
Employer taxes	Taxes the employer must remit, which don’t affect the employee’s net pay.
Rates	The rate for each tax, or the rate type where the rate depends on brackets or employer experience. See Tax rate types.
Tax identifiers	A unique tax ID on every tax, identifying which tax it is and which jurisdiction levies it.
Location data	State, county, school district, city, and local jurisdiction names with their FIPS and GNIS codes, plus Pennsylvania PSD codes.

Multi-state scenarios are handled for you: Payroll Point evaluates nexus, reciprocity and nonresident certificates, and courtesy withholding when an employee lives and works in different states.

What Payroll Point is not

Payroll Point determines which taxes apply and at what rate. It does not calculate withholding amounts for a paycheck. That’s the Symmetry Tax Engine, which Payroll Point calls behind the scenes.

You need to	Reach for
Know which taxes apply to an address	Payroll Point
Calculate the withholding for a pay run	Symmetry Tax Engine
Look up minimum wage rates for a work location	Payroll Point minimum wage add-on, or Minimum Wage Finder

Two ways to use it

Payroll Point is available as a Portal (browser-based UI) and an API (REST). Both use the same underlying tax engine and return the same results. The difference is how you interact with the product. See Portal vs. API to choose.

Where to go next

Get started

What you need before your first lookup, then a quickstart for Portal or the API.

Required taxes

Understand how Payroll Point decides which taxes are required, using residency, nexus, and courtesy withholding.

​How a lookup works

​What you get back

​What Payroll Point is not

​Two ways to use it

​Where to go next