W-4's

Down_the_Middle

Should the employee's W-4 be maintained in HR or in payroll? Anybody have any definitive info on this topic? We maintain the 2,000 W-4's in HR (separate from the pers file), but there's an internal debate over whether the W-4 properly belongs in the payroll area......... What do you payroll experts think????

TheCol

The W-4 form is the authorization by the employee to fiddle with his/her paycheck. Should be kept in the payroll area. If s/he gets married, has a child, or other item, copy of notice to payroll might help generate a new W-4, although it is a service. Responsibility is to the employee. Excess (11) dependents requires notice to the IRS, for example.

njjel

We have the same issue come up here all of the time. Accounting doesn't want to maintain a file for them and HR doesn't feel it belongs in the Personnel File either. If HR does keep it, is it proper to keep it in the Personnel File? More input on this subject from others would be appreciated.

AnaFL

We keep them in both places, hr/personnel files - under employee pay status records, which is where copies of review letters are kept also, and the original is sent to our payroll department which is located in Wisconsin. The reason we do it this way is that should our employees here, in our Florida location wish to see what they are currently claiming and/or want to change anything, we have easy access, and then I simply forward the original to WI after making a copy for my files here. It has worked very well for us, although may seem like a waste of paper for some I guess.

HR in Okla

We also keep them both places. Our accounting dept is just up the hall from HR, but HR has the original with the other pay status change forms and accounting keeps a duplicate file of payroll related things. Payroll pulls their file upon termination and it is filed along with the personnel file in terminated records. We have about 260 employees, not 2000 though.

Holly

We keep in both as well. The original is maintained in a separate file, along with other personal deduction forms and a copy is sent to Payroll to verify that HR input the information correctly.

HR keeps the original, because many of our employees come in at the end of the year asking, "what did I claim? My accountant wants to know."

Anita

Since I am the payroll and human resources I keep them in their personnel files locked up in the hr/payroll office!

System

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 03-14-02 AT 07:23PM (CST)[/font][p]I thought this might be a good topic for our weekly HRhero.com poll, and sure enough, it generated more responses than any previous poll question. Here are the results:

Do you file your ee's W-4s in HR dept or payroll dept?

Respondents said:
39.4% Payroll department
36.0% HR department
22.8% Both
1.8% Elsewhere

Total Respondents: 558



Christy Reeder
Website Managing Editor
[url]www.HRhero.com[/url]

Rockie

I've never seen it maintained anywhere but the HR files. I would suggest it stay there because these files are kept confidential, usually under lock and key. The more spread out employee information is...the more likely things are to get misplaced or seen by prying eyes. Just my opinion...

dwf

We keep the original in the personnel file in a section entitled Compensation and Payroll Data; a copy of the form goes to payroll headquarters in Dallas. Payroll keys the information into PeopleSoft. Access to view PeopleSoft information is given to certain HR personnel at the local level as well as Dallas payroll. I don't refer to the personnel file for withholding information unless there is some kind of discrepancy. The ee makes withholding changes through local HR.