Open Forum

We have an employee who told us in December 2022 that he moved to WA state from CA.  He's now telling us that he actually moved there in September 2021 and he wants us to revise his W2 for 2021 and 2022 to reflect that.  To further complicate things, in April 2023 he filed for CA PFL and received 8 weeks of benefits.  He would only have been eligible for those benefits because he paid into CA PFL during the time he was living in WA but we didn't know.  

I would appreciate any guidance and advice on what our responsibility is here.  There will be considerable cost to revise all of those quarters and I'm not sure if we would only need to correct income tax or the state benefits.  It is my understanding that if you are an out of state employee working for a CA employer, you can choose to elect CA UI/SDI/PFL rather than your home state.

Thank you!!

If we are talking about work location (residence is not a factor at all), meaning you have a remote employee and had no idea where they performed services:

There are other not too old similar threads. Essentially, you are both at fault. It is the employer's responsibility to know where all work is performed, via a timecard type process. The only public answer I can give is to get advice from counsel.

Personally, I would tell the employee to pound sand, based on their PFL claim, and I would actually terminate. (Claiming CA PFL when actually working in WA is fraud to me.) I would also accept some responsibility for not knowing where the work was performed and be ready to pay up if the counsellor says I have to go back and do a clean-up.

My remote employee is permitted to only work in one specified room of their home, which I can visit with proper notice, and they have to have a company provided phone on during working hours, with tracking enabled. There are other working conditions, such as having the proper labor posters on site as required, keeping the work area acceptable to our WC carrier, etc. And this is my DIL!!!