How to Configure Washington Paid Family Medical Leave

Find out how to set up Washington Paid Family Medical Leave (WA PFML) in Namely Payroll.

The Washington Paid Family Medical Leave (WA-PFML) can be administered in multiple ways. To understand how your WA-PMFL should be administered, you should first consider the following questions and information.

  • Your employee count in Washington since September 30 of the prior year. This is also called a lookback period.

  • If you want to pay 100% of the premium.

  • If you have a private plan.

Tip:

For more information visit the Washington Paid Family Leave site. 

After understanding where your responsibilities and needs, you can make a decision on how to administer. You will fall into one of the following categories.

  • You have fewer than fifty Washington employees and have chosen to administer an employee-only tax.

  • You have fifty or more Washington employees and have chosen a payment split between employee and employer.

  • You as the employer will pay 100% of the tax.

  • You have decided to leverage private PFML plans.


Fewer than fifty Washington employees (Employee-only tax)

You can use this application method only if you have fewer than fifty Washington employees within the lookback period (September 30 of the prior calendar year to now).

In this application, the following is enforced:

  • Employees are taxed at the current PFML rate up to the current year’s Social Security Taxable Wage limit

  • Employers do not have to pay WA-PFML tax.

To have the employer portion of this tax excluded from your company, you will have to submit a case. Please submit a case in the Help Community under Payroll using the subject line WA-PFML Tax and state that you wish to exclude the employer portion.


Fifty or more Washington employees (Employee/Employer split)

You can use this application method if you have fifty or more Washington employees within the lookback period (September 30 of the prior calendar year to now) and want the payment to be split between you and your employee.

In this application, the following is enforced

  • Employees are taxed at the current PFML rate up to the current year's Social Security Taxable Wage limit.

  • Employers are taxed at the current PFML rate up to the current year's Social Security Taxable Wage limit.

For this application, no special setup is needed.


Employers choose to pay 100% of the tax

You can use this application method if you want to pay 100% of the tax for your employees.

You can also elect to pay both the employer and employee portion of the WA-PFML Tax.

To apply this method, please submit a case in the Help Community under Payroll and the subject line WA-PFML Tax to get the setup configured.


Employers with private PFML plans

If you decide to have private PFML plans, you will need to have the WA PFML tax excluded from your site to stop the calculation of the tax. To set up deductions for a private plan and exclude the tax codes, please submit a case in the Help Community under Payroll and the subject line WA-PFML Private Plan.

Private Plan premiums need to be paid directly to your insurance provider. 

 

Tip:

The Tax ID number is your UBI number with a C in front. You can look up your UBI number here.