By Barbara Davis · Published 2026-01-19 · Approx. 4 minute read
Most payroll penalties we see in Olympia are not caused by unwillingness to pay. They are caused by a filing that arrived nine days late because nobody owned the calendar. Here is the calendar we keep for our own clients.
Quarterly obligations
Three Washington agencies want a quarterly report from almost every employer, and all three use the same due date: the last day of the month following the quarter's end. In practice that means 30 April, 31 July, 31 October and 31 January.
- Labor & Industries — quarterly report of hours worked by risk classification, plus premium payment. Misclassified risk codes are the single most expensive error we correct for construction clients.
- Employment Security Department — quarterly wage detail for every employee, including part-time and seasonal staff.
- Paid Family & Medical Leave — premium reporting through the same quarterly window; employers with fewer than 50 employees still report, even when exempt from the employer share.
Monthly and annual items
Federal deposit schedules depend on your lookback period; most small employers deposit monthly by the 15th. Combined excise returns to the Department of Revenue are monthly, quarterly or annual depending on assigned frequency — check the letter, not your assumption.
Year-end brings W-2 and 1099-NEC issuance by 31 January, and that deadline applies to both recipient copies and the government filing. There is no longer a paper grace period worth relying on.
What late actually costs
L&I applies a penalty plus interest that compounds quarterly. ESD assesses an incomplete-report penalty per employee. The genuine cost, however, tends to be time: unwinding a misfiled quarter takes far longer than filing it correctly did.
A practical system
Put every date above in a shared calendar with a seven-day advance reminder, assign one named owner per filing, and never let the reminder go to a role address nobody reads. If that sounds like something you would rather hand off, that is precisely what our payroll service covers.