Taxability Rules for Earnings and Deductions Categories

Oracle Payroll delivers with all existing rules for the Federal and state-level taxability. These taxability rules are in place for a number of categories of supplemental and imputed earnings types and for three categories of pre-tax deductions. For Pre-Tax deductions, along with Federal and state levels, Oracle Payroll delivers tax withholding rules for county and city levels. Each release of Oracle Payroll updates these rules.

Tax Withholding Rules for County and City Levels for Pre-Tax Deductions

Oracle Payroll uses the default county or city rule, if the county or city specific tax withholding rules are not defined. These county or city specific tax withholding rules can be Oracle delivered or user-defined.

You can also alter the rules delivered by Oracle using the Taxability Rules window. The following sections explain how the tax withholding rules work at the county or city level for pre-tax deductions.

PAY: Override User Defined Local Taxability Rules Profile Option

This profile option impacts only the local taxability rules added for Pre-Tax Deductions. This profile option provides users an option to configure the local taxability rules in their system: either retain the user-defined data and Oracle delivered data with user-defined data being given precedence or use Oracle delivered data only. If this profile is not set or set as No, then the HRMS Legislative Data (hrglobal.drv) application will upload Oracle delivered data, but will not override the user-defined data. If the profile value is set as Yes, then the HRMS Legislative Data (hrglobal.drv) application clears the local taxability rules related to seeded pre-tax deduction categories only and loads Oracle delivered data. Note that the rules corresponding to custom pre-tax categories are not deleted. Once the data upload is completed, the 'PAY: Override User Defined Local Taxability Rules' profile option is set as No. This is to prevent any subsequent HRGlobal driver applications from clearing data again. It may be possible that you may want to change some data after the initial cleanup. In future, if it is necessary to clear the data and load Oracle data, set the profile "PAY: Override User Defined Local Taxability Rules" to Yes again and run HRMS Legislative Data (hrglobal.drv).

Important: The HRGlobal driver process migrates the Tax Withholding rules related to custom Pre-Tax categories from the State level to Default County, Default City, County and City levels. The Tax Withholding Rules form also migrates the changes made to tax withholding rules from the State level, Default County and Default City levels to subsequent levels as required. This eliminates the requirement to manually update custom Pre-Tax Tax Withholding Rules at the Local level.

The following rules apply when the Tax Withholding rules are migrated by the HRGlobal driver or Tax Withholding rules form:

Assignment Location Rules Overview Example

An employee moves to three different states, A, B, and C in a year. In state A, the employee works in two different counties, D and E. In State B, the employee works in city G (which is located in county F). In State C, the employee works in an unspecified area. The employee's percentage in each of these areas is expressed in the following table:

Work Location State A State B State C
County D 30% 0% 0%
County E 20% 0% 0%
County F 0% 0% 0%
City G 0% 30% 0%
Unspecified 0% 0% 20%
Total in State this year 50% 30% 20%

Note: The state totals add up to 100% for the year.

Examples of State and Local Exemption Rules

Following are sample scenarios that illustrate typical uses of State and local tax exemptions.

Scenario 1: No State or Local Tax Exemptions

This is the system default. Oracle Payroll withholds taxes from all fifty states and subordinate localities unless you specify otherwise.

Scenario 2: Doing Business in Only One State with No Local Tax Exemptions

In the Employer Identification screen, the State Tax Withholding Rule field must be set to States under State Tax Rules. In the State Tax rules screen, information should be entered and maintained only for the state that the company is doing business in.

The system default is for taxes to be withheld for all localities in the state in question. This means that on the State Tax Rules screen, the Exempt State Income Tax field is set to No, and the Local Income Tax Withholding Rule field is set to All Localities.

Scenario 3: Doing Business in Some States with Some Local Tax Exemptions

In the Employer Identification screen, the State Tax Withholding Rule field must be set to States under State Tax Rules. In the State Tax Rules screen, information should be entered and maintained only for the states that the company is doing business in. The Exempt State Income Tax field should be set to No.

In the State Tax Rules screen, the Local Income Tax Withholding Rule field should be set to Only Localities Under Local Tax Rules. In the Local Tax Rules screen, tax rules should be set up only for those localities that employees reside in. The Exempt Local Income Taxes field should be used to determine if you want to withhold taxes for this locality.

Note: If you have a business location in a certain locality, you have to withhold taxes for that locality.