PEO information

If you are a “professional employer organization” (PEO) that has clients in Washington state, there are laws that affect you. PEOs are businesses that manage human-resource issues, such as workers’ compensation, payroll and unemployment insurance (UI), for other companies.

The law now requires you to register with the Employment Security Department and to make sure that your client employers are also registered. If you represent a client employer for UI purposes, you must provide a power of attorney completed by each client employer. The power of attorney form is also available online.

Every PEO must provide the department with the information on the enclosed report form for every client employer who does business in Washington state. You also can use this form to report new clients in the future. You must notify our department within 30 days each time you add or terminate a relationship with a client employer and must include the effective date of the change.

If you have multiple clients, we recommend that you submit information (other than the power of attorney form) by fax to 800-794-7657. You may file your taxes and upload the data on our secure Web site.

Under the law, PEOs will be required to file quarterly tax and wage reports broken out by individual client employer. We recommend that you file reports electronically in one of two ways:

• File a separate electronic report for each client employer using electronic reporting using EAMS.

You also have the option of filing separate paper reports for each client employer (Forms 5208A and 5208B). At this time, if you file separately for each client employer, you also must submit a separate tax payment for each client employer. Payments can be made by check or online.

Read the law, WAC 192-300-200, affecting PEOs and their client employers. If you have questions, please e-mail us at status@esd.wa.gov.

Thank you for your cooperation.