Your business has been going well. You’ve done the hard work and established a good customer base. Now, you are getting overwhelmed by requests for your services. You know that you need to expand and your first priority is to hire an employee.
It’s vital that you check all the boxes legally so that you are protected and the newly-hired workers gets the employment benefits to which they’re entitled. To hire your first employee, you will need to:
- Apply for an employee identification number, or EIN
- Set up the withholding of taxes
- Verify that your potential new hire is legally able to work in the United States
- Register your new hire with the state’s new hire reporting system
- Get workers’ compensation insurance
- Register with the state to pay unemployment insurance tax, if needed
- Determine if you need to get disability insurance
- Put up workplace posters, or, alternatively, provide copies of this information to your employee if you have no specific workplace
- File taxes as an employer
Since you have always worked on your own, these steps are going to be unique from what you’ve done in the past. You may not be familiar with these steps, but that’s okay. You can talk to your attorney about your business structure to make sure it’s right for taking on an employee. Then, follow the above steps to hire your employee correctly.
Your attorney will assist you with this process to ensure your employee is legally working for your company. This will protect you and help you learn more about bringing on more employees, if you wish to do so in the future.
