Department of Taxation and Finance

Administration of Selected Components of the Wage Reporting System (Follow-Up Report)

The Department of Taxation and Finance maintains the Wage Reporting System, which contains the gross wages paid to each employee residing or employed in New York State. Employers are required by law to report this information each quarter. The information is reported to a contractor and then forwarded to the Department. If the information is reported to the contractor in paper format, it is converted to electronic format by the contractor. In our initial audit report 2001-S-42 , we found that improvements were needed in the accuracy of the conversion process. We also found that large discrepancies in reported wages were often corrected in an untimely manner, or were not corrected at all. We further found that employers who failed to report the required information by the due dates were not always penalized as required by law. When we followed up on these matters with Department officials, we found that significant progress had been made in addressing the problems identified by our audit.

For a complete copy of Report 2004-F-27 click here.