Tax Configuration
How tax setup and filing actually work in Greenroom — the State tax registrations stage, plus what still runs through Check
A dedicated tax-configuration stage now exists — this page previously said it didn't
An earlier version of this page said there was no settings screen for tax jurisdictions or withholding. That's no longer true for state-level registration: State tax registrations is now a required stage in Company Setup. Employee withholding still runs entirely through Check, as described below.
Your FEIN
Your company's FEIN is entered once, as part of General Information's Business info stage — it isn't a separate tax setting.
State tax registrations (Company Setup)
New York only, today
Greenroom can only run payroll registrations for New York. The State tax stage refuses to save a different state outright, with a message explaining the limit rather than treating it as a mistake on your part. If your production operates in a state other than New York, talk to your Greenroom contact.
The fifth stage on the Company Setup checklist collects what Check needs to compute and file New York employer taxes correctly:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| SUI (unemployment) account number | Checked against the shapes New York actually issues — 1234567-8, 12345678, or 12-34567. A number in another shape is refused at the field with "New York issues this number as … Check your state notice and re-enter it." Or tick "Applied for — filings will queue until the ID arrives" if you don't have one yet. |
| Employer unemployment (SUI) rate | Validated against Check's own published range for the current year, not a value Greenroom invented. Left blank, Check computes at its own fallback rate instead of your real one — see below |
| Withholding | New York withholds under your FEIN, already on file from Business info — there's no separate withholding account number to type in |
| MCTMT account number | The Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility Tax — or "Applied for" |
| MCTMT Zone 1 / Zone 2 rates | Each zone first asks "does anyone work in this zone?" as a yes/no/unanswered question — answering "no" is a real, permanent assertion (a 0% rate), which is why it's kept distinct from simply not having answered yet |
| Withholding deposit schedule | A vendor-published option list, not a Greenroom-authored one |
| EFT PIN | For electronic filing — or "Applied for" |
| SUI reimbursable election | Only appears once you've answered the nonprofit-status question on Business info — a 501(c)(3) answer unlocks it |
Why the format check exists
On 2026-08-10 a correct number typed in the wrong shape was pushed to Check, rejected, and surfaced to the producer as raw vendor text quoting regular expressions — from a batch push rather than from the field they'd typed into. The number was right; only its punctuation was wrong. The check now happens at the field, in plain words.
It's a kindness rather than a safety control, so it fails open: if Check publishes a shape Greenroom can't parse, the value is accepted rather than refused on Greenroom's own ignorance. Check enforces the real rule either way.
A missing unemployment rate isn't just a formality
If you don't have your real SUI rate on file, Check computes your employer unemployment tax at its own fallback rate instead. If New York actually assigned your company a higher rate, you owe the difference — this doesn't block submitting for review, but the stage's status line states the cost in plain terms rather than treating the field as optional busywork.
Because Greenroom currently registers one workplace per company, the state field itself isn't editable once a row exists — you're registering the one state your business address is in, not adding jurisdictions freely. A save that reaches Check is verified by reading the registration back, not just trusted; if a save can't reach Check, you get an honest warning rather than a silent failure, and the stage's registration-status panel shows what the provider actually holds per registration when it's reachable.
Walking through this stage files nothing
Saving a registration here files it with New York through Check, and it can be corrected afterwards but never withdrawn. So the wizard's Save and continue button only submits rows you've actually edited since the page loaded — an untouched stage, including the blank row Greenroom seeds for a brand-new company, is left alone. A row you've started but not given a state stops the advance with "Pick a state for this registration, or clear the fields you have entered."
Correcting a tax value after payroll has run
Correcting a rate, a nonprofit answer, or a reimbursable election takes effect from a date you choose. It does not recalculate payrolls you have already approved — that's how Check works, not a Greenroom limitation, and it has a real consequence: a quarterly return computes from payrolls as they were run, so a payroll that used the wrong value produces a wrong return.
Greenroom tells you which, by name, the moment you save:
Saved. The correction applies from 2026-04-01, but it does not recalculate payrolls you have already approved — 6 approved payrolls in Q2 2026 and Q3 2026 used the old value, so those filings are still wrong. Contact Check about an amended return; Greenroom can't amend a filing for you.
If nothing is affected, it says so plainly instead: "No payrolls have been approved on or after that date, so no quarterly filing is affected." The warning only fires when approved payrolls actually fall inside the corrected span — a rate fixed before your first payroll is a clean fix and reads as one.
The trigger is a payroll's pay date, not its period end, because an employment-tax return reports wages in the quarter they were paid. And a quarter that has already ended is treated no differently from the current one: an approved payroll in the current quarter carries the wrong tax too, so that return will be wrong when it's filed.
Nonprofit status
On the Business info stage, you answer whether your production is run by a nonprofit — not a nonprofit, a 501(c)(3), or a government-entity 501(c). This is a real Check tax parameter, not a cosmetic field: it changes federal unemployment (FUTA) treatment, and answering 501(c)(3) unlocks the SUI reimbursable election on the State tax stage above. Saving a nonprofit answer re-pushes it to Check immediately if your company already exists there, rather than waiting for the next state-tax save.
Employee tax withholding — handled by Check, not Greenroom
Federal (W-4) and applicable state withholding (New York's IT-2104, and NYC's sub-form for city residents) are filled out by each employee directly through Check's own hosted onboarding link — not through a Greenroom form. Greenroom deliberately doesn't build a withholding form and doesn't store filing status, allowances, or other withholding details; it only reads back Check's status per jurisdiction and displays it.
On a payee's profile, you'll see their withholding status per jurisdiction as one of:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Complete | Check confirms this jurisdiction's withholding is filled out |
| Needs attention | Check is still waiting on the employee |
| Unknown | Not yet synced with Check |
Payroll can't be submitted for an employee until their withholding shows resolved — this is checked live against Check at the moment you submit, not just from the cached status shown on their profile.
Employer-side payroll taxes
Employer taxes — Social Security, Medicare, federal unemployment (FUTA), New York state unemployment (SUI), and MCTMT where it applies — are calculated and paid through Check as part of running payroll. They show up as a line item on funding documents and payroll reports; they aren't something you configure by jurisdiction ahead of time.
Company-level tax filing authorization
This is no longer "nothing happens here" — Greenroom now sends your authorized signer a branded link to e-sign the payroll tax filing authorizations directly, through an embedded Check ceremony. See Tax Authorization Forms for how that signing flow actually works today, including why an even older version of this product had no signing step of any kind in between.
SDC and USA 829
For payees who are already set up as Contractor, Loan-out, or Vendor type (never for W-2 employees — see Union Setup for why union assignment can't change that), SDC and USA 829 (United Scenic Artists) payments can be split across two different 1099 forms — 1099-NEC for their fee and 1099-MISC for advances or royalties — rather than reporting entirely on one form. See Union Setup for the full union list and Union Rate Reference for confirmed vs. pending rates. Fee/advance/royalty-based pay itself (as opposed to a weekly salary) isn't available in the product yet — see Known Gaps.
An earlier version of this page described a 'SDC-only companies' tax parameter limitation — still not real, even though a general tax-parameter system now exists
A prior draft claimed that SDC-only companies never generate state-level employer tax parameters (like a NY unemployment EIN), tied to a specific CheckHQ "retry mechanism" and an SDC-only in-app alert. That was never real, and it still isn't: the State tax registrations stage described above is a genuine, newly-shipped tax-parameter system, but nothing about it is SDC-specific — every company, regardless of which union it runs (or none at all), goes through the identical New York state-tax stage. There's no SDC-only branch, alert, or retry mechanism anywhere in it.
Common issues
A payee can't be paid because of withholding
Check their tax withholding status — if any jurisdiction shows "Needs attention," they haven't finished their W-4 (or state equivalent) with Check yet. Send them the tax setup link from their profile.
Looking for a "Tax Configuration" settings page
State-level tax registration lives on the State tax registrations stage of Company Setup, covered above — not in Settings. Employee withholding is still entirely Check's; FEIN lives in Business info; employer taxes are calculated automatically when you run payroll.
Next steps
See Tax Authorization Forms for how the tax-filing signature works, or continue to Adding Payees to begin building your payroll roster.