§ 19-11-9.2.Duty of employers to report employee hiring or rehiring

This is Georgia’s new-hire reporting law. Subsection (a) requires employers doing business in Georgia to report to the Georgia state support registry, run by the Department of Human Services, two kinds of events: hiring anyone who lives or works in Georgia and whom the employer expects to pay, and rehiring or returning to work any employee who had been laid off, furloughed, separated, granted leave without pay or terminated.

Under subsection (c), employers may report by mailing the employee’s copy of the W-4 form or by another method the registry authorizes that results in timely reporting. Reports are due within ten days of the hire, rehire or return to work. Each report must include 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. An employer that fails to report receives a written warning.

Subsection (d) protects privacy. The registry keeps information about an employee only if it is responsible for establishing, enforcing or collecting a support obligation or debt that employee owes. If the employee owes nothing, the registry shall not create a record and must promptly destroy the information — subject to the limited access rights in subsections (f), (g) and (h).

Those subsections let the department use the registry to check eligibility for needs-based programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and food stamps, and let the Department of Labor use it to check the employment status of people seeking or receiving unemployment benefits and to collect delinquent contributions and overpaid benefits. The department may adopt rules creating exemptions to reduce unnecessary or burdensome reporting, administers the registry, provides computer access to authorized users and may divide the registry’s costs among them. The section was last amended in 2009.