Episode 7: Payroll in the United States

Luisa Rollenhagen (0:07): 

Hi everyone. We’re back with another episode of ADP Payroll Around The World. I’m your host, Luisa Rollenhagen. This podcast series is your go-to resource for understanding how payroll operates in different countries. We explore the unique aspects of each nation’s payroll system with insights from ADP experts on the ground and stories from locals who share their experiences with work and pay in their homeland. After all, payroll can’t really be global if it isn’t local as well. Today, we’re going to the United States of America. The USA is still the biggest economy in the world with a gross domestic product of just over 28 trillion US dollars. Comprised of 50 states with a significant degree of independence, the USA offers businesses a diverse and lucrative, but also complex economic landscape. It’s home to many household names in the technology, manufacturing and finance sector, and boasts the world’s largest stock exchanges, courtesy of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. It’s also a country where employers can expect a pretty flexible labour market. This means that most companies in the US utilise at-will employment agreements, wherein an employer can terminate an employee for any reason and without warning, as long as the reason isn’t discriminatory. But there are complexities you need to consider, depending on the state your workers are in.

Dawn Wautier (1:40):

Different states take different approaches like California and Colorado. These are more employee friendly states. And you really need to understand when you’re going to release someone, in that you have to pay them within 24 hours of exiting the company in the state of California. But that doesn’t apply in other states like the state of Georgia

Luisa Rollenhagen (1:59): 

And because the United States has such a large and diverse workforce, in fact, about 168 million people form part of the civilian labour force as of 2024, running payroll in the US means processing huge volumes of data. And remember those 50 states I mentioned earlier with each one having their own jurisdictions and laws?

Chris Acostandei (2:20):

So the US is functioning more like 50 different countries combined, rather than one big country. That’s Chris and the person you had a bit earlier is Dawn. They’re our ADP experts for this episode and they’re going to help us really dive deep into the details of running payroll in the US. But payroll is fundamentally about employees and navigating a country that’s basically 50 different mini countries, means that people will regularly cross state borders for work, obligating themselves and their employer to fulfil various different tax and labour law requirements.

April (2:55):

I pay taxes to the state of California and I pay taxes to the federal government because I live in Florida. It’s a tax-free state, so we don’t pay income tax, so I don’t pay income tax to Florida, but some people who live in different states have to pay their state tax also.

Luisa Rollenhagen (3:14): 

That’s April. She’s a nurse who works in California but is a resident of Florida. She’ll be telling us a bit more about her experiences navigating her Bi-State employment situation later on. But first I’d like to formally welcome Dawn and Chris. Hi, you two! Would you mind introducing yourselves?

Dawn Wautier (3:33):

Hi, I am Dawn Wautier, I am the General Manager and Division Vice President at ADP. I live in Alpharetta, Georgia and I have been with ADP since 2015.

Chris Acostandei (3:45):

Hi, I’m Chris Acostandei. I’m the Director of Global Product and Technology at ADP. I’m based in the USA in Tampa Bay, Florida and I’ve been with ADP for more than 15 years.

Luisa Rollenhagen (3:58): 

Thanks so much for joining us today! So we’ve already hinted at the fact that one of the reasons why payroll in the USA can get pretty complicated, is due to the country’s federal system of government, which allows individual states plenty of independence. Can you tell us a bit more about why that affects businesses, particularly when it comes to payroll?

Dawn Wautier (4:19):

So, United States is a a massive country with 340 million people. It’s the third most populous in the world, and I think some of the things that make the United States complex in particular, it sounds like one country, one language, one currency, and those things do make things easier. But we have an immense amount of local jurisdictions. Every state acts like a unique country and I think most people outside of the United States probably don’t realise that. And so it does make, it does make operating in the United States challenging understanding the legislation and tax jurisdictions, is also… who we have basically every pay frequency that you possible weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly and monthly. And so there is, we call them payroll sprints every week and that is definitely something that is unique to this country. What are payroll sprints? Just running from one to the next. So it is by the time you have closed one, you’re already starting looking at the next one. Many countries outside of the United States have a monthly payroll and so there’s a lot that you can do in that month, but inside of the United States and especially because we have salaried and hourly employees, that can be paid on alternative weeks depending on the kinds of population, you just literally are constantly running payroll in the United States.

Chris Acostandei (5:44):

In addition to what Dawn just said, there is volume in the United States payrolls. So every client that would come into the US market would have a large presence of employees and the volume brings complexity now. So you have multiple scenarios. Each employee may be a little bit different. Also, it’s the number of businesses that are present here in the United States

Luisa Rollenhagen (6:11): 

With a workforce of over 100 million people. I can imagine that payroll stays busy. Speaking of the businesses that are present in the United States, are there any specific industries that are more present or is every sector of business represented?

Dawn Wautier (6:26):

We have all kinds of industries. There’s certainly a segmentation in geographic regions, for example, central United States has a lot of energy, oil and gas industry there, a lot of manufacturing. West Coast has a lot of IT, but we really have just about everything I think that you can possibly imagine in the United States, so there’s no just one thing, but there is just about everything and it’s always interesting to talk to other people and what their perceptions are, and I think that the world believes that the United States is built on these massive companies, but the truth is, it’s the small companies that make up kind of the larger growth in the country. So it really is, I think just the fact that it’s so easy to be self-employed and have your own company, we have a lot of small businesses.

Chris Acostandei (7:16):

Yeah, I would just add as, Dawn said, the small businesses now in the United States are the backbone of the economy. I myself, I was born in Romania, I moved to United States more than 20 years ago and I was surprised because I was actually thinking I have the same concept that you see all of these big corporations and you’re thinking this is what the labour forces in the United States is like. But in reality, the backbone of the economy are the small businesses, tens of millions of small businesses, and that’s what makes United States such a gig economy.

Luisa Rollenhagen (7:52): 

That’s very interesting. I want to go back to the difficulties associated with individual states’ rules and regulations. Could you tell me more about that?

Chris Acostandei (8:01):

So the US is functioning more like 50 different countries combined rather than one big country. And this is very challenging when you want to pay your employees, where you have each state with their own constitution and they have their own legislative requirements. On top of that, there are thousands of localities. So, not just the state level legislation, but you also have to deal with local entities that govern their own body and they have their own legal requirements. So complexity of the legal landscape is, I would say the number one challenge in the US payrolls. And then I would also say the volume of those legal changes, the amount of the legal changes that are released in the United States, it’s extremely high. We are analysing and deploying hundreds of US legal changes on a weekly basis. Even as we speak right now, somewhere in the United States, there is a state where a small locality somewhere is deploying a new tax, is changing a rate for an existing tax or is changing taxability of wages, etc. There is a reason why even large bill providers in the US are outsourcing their tax engine rather than trying to manage it internally. And I would add that a third challenge for doing payrolls in the US, which also relates to compliance, is the tax filings. Imagine you are a big corporation that has employees paid in almost all the US states. In addition to paying their employees, the company must deposit, file taxes and liabilities, employee and employer taxes. Now with thousands of tax authorities, at least on a quarterly basis, those require tax forms to be completed within the strict deadlines and reconciliations. So it is quite complex, but the good news is ADP is the leader in US tax filings. All the clients are coming to ADP knowing that ADP can handle this giant landscape of taxes and requirements.

Luisa Rollenhagen (10:12): 

Right. I’m sure that’s especially encouraging for those smaller businesses that are very present in the US economy. So given this complexity, what advice would you give to someone who’s abroad who’s thinking about setting up a business in the United States?

Chris Acostandei (10:26):

Well, my advice would be quite simple. I would say congratulations. I mean you are operating in the biggest market in the world. You made it to the US, so you are on your path to a tremendous expansion, but buckle up because it’s not going to be easy.

Dawn Wautier (10:43):

This is something that I think because of the complexities and the potential fines that you can have for not understanding the law, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean that you’re not subject to it. So I think working with a provider who does understand and can be consultative in how to stand up in company and there are just so many different aspects that you need to think about and everything from, you know, the benefits to labour law, to tax law and it’s become quite complex. It’s not like it was 20 years ago, where you know, you can just write a check and you know, do your tax return once a year. The laws have changed so dramatically and being able to keep up with those laws between the federal, the state, and the local jurisdictions, it’s just I think a bit overwhelming, especially if you’re talking about a small business. And so partnering with a company that is going to be able to help guide you through that to ensure that you are going to do things right, that you are not going to have repercussions for doing it wrong and that allows you to focus on your core business, I think is really important.

Chris Acostandei (11:52):

Every company is trying to do honest business here in the US because they know that the penalties are very sharp and they would be out of business. If you are not compliant in the US, you cannot conduct business, you would be put out of business.

Dawn Wautier (12:07):

There’s so much that you need to know, but the complexity just gets even greater when you talk about larger companies, like for example, multi jurisdiction. Large companies have employees that will work in different places and being able to calculate those taxes cross border is important and it’s vital, you know, understanding when employees move, right, and you’re contributing into a 401k, which is the retirement plan and what the max contributions are and there’s just so much to consider and it is not something that I would do alone. You have a special small company, you have the impetus rate, you don’t have the resources to spend, but the thing is, is that the repercussions of doing it wrong can cost more than just partnering with someone who’s going to help you do it right from the beginning.

Luisa Rollenhagen (12:58): 

Right? So having employees spread out across different states can vastly alter the HR regulations that you need to follow, depending on where employees are located. I’m guessing this also applies to hiring and firing laws?

Dawn Wautier (13:11):

Different states take different approaches like California and Colorado. These are more employee friendly states and you really need to understand when you’re going to release someone in that you have to pay them within 24 hours of exiting the company in the state of California. But that doesn’t imply in other states like the state of Georgia, it’s not so easy to hire or fire or enter or exit the market as one would think. There are a lot of complexities that you need to consider.

Luisa Rollenhagen (13:38): 

When I think about the way employers need to navigate multi-state employees, it really feels like trying to assemble a puzzle. You’ve got someone in California who is entitled to a completely different set of benefits than someone in Colorado and you’ve got to make sure you’re staying compliant across different combinations. I was also curious to learn what this kind of multi-state employment situation was like for an employee. In this series, we also highlight the voices of local people on the ground in order to hear their perspectives on work and pay. Remember April who we heard from earlier in the episode? She works at a hospital in California, but lives in Florida. We caught up with her while she was in California where she has been staying for two weeks out of the month. She spends the other two weeks in her home in Florida. April has been managing this work and living arrangement for eight years.

April (14:29):

I spend two weeks in San Francisco and two weeks in Florida. Sometimes it varies depending on, you know, maybe I might have something that I’m doing, that I might come out of three weeks at a time because you know, I just have other things to do so I’ll stay out longer and then go home, you know, for a shorter period. It all depends on what other activities I have to do outside of work.

Luisa Rollenhagen (14:54): 

April’s decision to take a job in California as opposed to Florida, boiled down to a simple thing. She was able to earn much more at a hospital out West.

April (15:04):

By October 2016, I took a per diem position. I like the work, I like the staff and going around as a traveller can be tiring, but also you have to find a place that’s going to pay you a decent amount of wage and also be able to take care of your home from the state that you live in. So basically you’re taking care of two households while you are travelling. I was based out of Florida and the wages in Florida, I realised that taking a per diem position in San Francisco, I can make the same money in one week. That it took me almost three weeks in Florida to make. So that’s what made me decide to take a position in San Francisco.

Luisa Rollenhagen (15:50): 

One of the first things I wanted to know about April’s situation was how she managed her taxes, since she’s employed in one state and a resident of another.

April (16:00):

I pay taxes to the state of California and I pay taxes to the federal government because I live in Florida. It’s a tax free state, so we don’t pay income tax, so I don’t pay income tax to Florida, but some people who live in different states have to pay their state tax also.

Luisa Rollenhagen (16:19): 

Because each state in the US can decide for itself if it wants to collect a state income tax for its residents, April’s specific situation meant that she could avoid paying two state taxes. But as she just said, that’s not always going to be the case, if someone lives in a state that does tax income. But just because April’s taxes weren’t too complicated, doesn’t mean that she didn’t face any issues with her arrangement.

April (16:44):

My biggest hurdle wasn’t paying taxes. My biggest hurdle was buying property. A lot of questions about why I work in a different state than I’m living, having to get proof of who I’m paying rent to in California, if I’m going to be mortgaging my place, you know, getting a mortgage in Florida, do I really work here even though they have pay stubs, they want to know from my employer that they know that I’m working in California and living in Florida. Those are the biggest hurdles I have. Tax-wise, it’s just a matter of paying non residency tax, which is only probably 20% less than if I was a resident. I pay a good amount of taxes to the state of California. I basically don’t have any deductions for California, so there’s nothing I can write off. So I’m paying a higher tax than probably most people would pay. Even as a non-resident, it’s probably why it’s only 20% less than what California residents pay.

Luisa Rollenhagen (17:41):

Since April is also a per diem worker, she’s not entitled to the same types of labour benefits she’d be entitled to under California law, if she were to be a part-time employee for example.

April (17:52):

Because on per diem, the per diem employees are non benefit employees, but they do have sick time for us. So we do accrue sick time, but we don’t get any benefits as far as health or dental. We can pay for that, so you can buy dental and health and with health you can also get vision. It’s very expensive because basically we are paying, I guess what the hospital would pay, but they open it up to us, where the employees might pay $35 a pay period. You know, we are paying almost $800 a pay period. So we’re paying a lot bigger chunk of our paycheck towards benefits than they do. We pay out-of-state California income tax, you know, but we still pay California income tax and we get no benefits from California. I don’t know, I don’t think we should pay as much as we do, but we do, you know, we don’t use any benefits but I guess we use the roads. I don’t know.

Luisa Rollenhagen (18:51):

Nonetheless, April says that the difference in pay still makes up for these challenges.

April (18:56):

I just think what it takes out of me, I think it’s worth it. I’ve been able to, you know, to purchase a home. I purchased a condo, things that I don’t think I would’ve been able to do those two, in the last seven years. I wouldn’t have been able to do that off my salary in Florida. I mean, if I’m honest, I made $37 an hour when I left California. I mean, I’m sorry, when I left Florida I made $37 an hour with 17 years of experience as a nurse. And when I started here with that same 17 years as a per diem employee who makes a little more than benefited employees because we don’t get benefits, I started out at $90 an hour, so it’s almost three times the amount of money and I don’t have to work as hard or as long. We have ratios, nurse to patient ratios, we get breaks. Things that we didn’t get in Florida, you know, if you got a break, you were lucky. You know, most of the time you know, they’ll pay you to not take your break. You know, many hospitals in Florida, you know have been cited and have employees clocking in and out to make sure that they get their breaks because they weren’t giving people their breaks. And like I said, you wasn’t making any money, right now, you know at what 25, almost 26 years of experience, they would probably pay me $45 an hour.

Luisa Rollenhagen (20:25):

After hearing April’s story, I was particularly curious to learn more about how taxation differs so widely among different states. So I went back to Dawn and Chris. So tell me, are there cases, as April mentioned, where employees do actually have to pay a double state tax and does every state have its own rules about when that taxation kicks in?

Dawn Wautier (20:47):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ll give you an example. So every state can determine whether or not you have state tax, in the state of Texas, you do not have state tax, the state of Florida, you do not have state tax, to your example. However, a flip side of that is in the state of New York, is if you enter the state of New York to go to a meeting and you live in another state, you have to count how many times you’ve been to the state of New York and track that and report on and they will have to pay… file a state income tax return for the state of New York. So it’s really important also that a company guides their employees and understands those laws because the company will be held accountable and the employee will be held accountable for not complying. So it is really quite complicated and it just, the landscape there, I think states get more and more creative about their tax approach. And so you just don’t want to find out two years down the road that the state of New York realises that you were there and you didn’t file a tax return because then you’re talking about penalties and interest as well.

Chris Acostandei (21:50): 

We already spoke about the complexity of this decentralised tax system that’s that exists in the US. Now imagine you have a company that’s doing consulting and we have clients that have thousands, tens of thousands of such employees that they actually have to travel in one pay period to multiple states. And you do have to track all of this time. And of course there are some thresholds, there are rules and regulations. Some of the states, they have reciprocity agreements, some of them don’t. You may end up paying more or less or even double for some states. To give you just an example, think of a major consulting company that has tens of thousands of employees, and one employee can live in New Jersey, but works in a 10 day period for five days in California, three days in Illinois and two days in New Jersey. So when you run payroll, the system should be able to calculate taxable wages and taxes for each of these tax jurisdictions involved. So in one paycheck you actually have to calculate multiple tax authorities, taxable wages and taxes. So as you can imagine, this can get extremely, extremely complex. The good thing is that we have those rules embedded into our ADP tax engine. Actually at ADP, we do have a solution for multi-jurisdiction taxation and we have, as I said, clients that are having tens of thousands of employees in this situation and we can manage that.

Luisa Rollenhagen (23:28):

Yeah, that sounds like you really need to not only be on top of all 50 state regulations, but also know how they relate to each other. Is there a state that you’d say is notoriously tough when it comes to these kinds of multi-state employment rules?

Chris Acostandei (23:41): 

Definitely, New York is tough, and let me just add that we’re not talking just state level, we’re talking about locality level. The city of New York also, its imposing income tax withholding. So it’s not just at the state level. There are localities that actually have their own income tax and they have their own tax forms. So all of that needs to be taken into consideration. But New York is top of the list, California, even Illinois, and not just the regular compensation, but think about a bonus pay or commissions where you actually do the work in a period, but then you get rewarded a different period of time. All of these awards actually need to be taxed back to where the income was sourced. And in some you think it’s stock options where you get vested in three years, maybe five years in some of these states, Illinois, they would go back five years and you would have to source that income based on how you earned it.

Luisa Rollenhagen (24:35):

So given all of these complexities, can you tell me a bit more about how ADP is helping clients stay compliant across multiple changing jurisdictions?

Dawn Wautier (24:45):

As far as our roadmap and how we go to market and where we prioritise our investments and research developments and product functionality, compliance is always number one.

Chris Acostandei (24:56): 

Yeah, as you said, Dawn compliance takes almost, I would say half of our capacity now. We have to constantly monitor and deploy those legal changes in our systems. At any time. When you are running payroll for top 500 fortune companies, you have to imagine that they have business almost everywhere in the United States. As I said before, a small locality changes is something we need to know about that and we do need to implement that change in time. So our clients are compliant everywhere they do business. We do have a large legislative management team specific for the US. Now it’s one team that’s basically it’s product agnostic. They provide a legal watch, they monitor any change, they even participate, they advise the government of the United States.

Luisa Rollenhagen (25:51):

Oh wow, that’s cool.

Chris Acostandei (25:52): 

ADP has a huge role in advising on those legal changes at the federal level. But yeah, we take compliance very seriously. We know that our clients are coming to ADP because we can provide that peace of mind for them that we take care of anything that happens.

Dawn Wautier (26:08):

I’d also add that there are other things that ADP does to help regardless of the size of the client, whether you have one employee or you have 1 million employees and helping with onboarding, with training, with business continuity planning, I mean these are all services that we help provide our clients, because when they start a business or you’re entering a market, it is because you’re good at something. But the whole back office and the taxes and it’s the HR portions of the… that is not necessarily what the company is good at unless that is their core business, and it is ADP’s core business, and so there’s a lot that goes around, I think, you know, not just being good at either developing a product or delivering a service, it’s everything to keep your lights on and your doors open to be competitive in the market for your employees and the kinds of benefits that you offer. There’s a lot to it and other than just being, you know, having a great product or service to sell that, that you need to consider.

Luisa Rollenhagen (27:12):

Absolutely. As Chris said earlier, you want businesses to focus on their core expertise and not spend all of their time trying to figure out the regulations and rules. A bit earlier, we heard April talk about having to pay significantly more for health benefits than her regularly employed colleagues. Could you tell me a bit more about how healthcare and in the same vein pensions work in the US?

Dawn Wautier (27:36):

That is such a great question and is definitely not something that I think most understand well. The United States is very different than many other countries in that it’s a capitalistic economy. So we have thousands of private insurance, as well as private retirement plans. It’s really up to the employee where in most countries, your pension and your benefits, your healthcare benefits are part of your taxation.

Luisa Rollenhagen (28:03):

Right, if you’re a regularly employed person in the United Kingdom, for example, your contributions to the national health system are automatically taken out of your paycheck. 

Dawn Wautier (28:12):

It comes out of our salaries and that’s taken care of, and the wonderful thing about that is everybody has health insurance and some kind of a pension, but in the United States, it’s a choice. So you can choose if your employer offers insurance and offers a retirement plan, you can choose not to actually participate. So a lot of the onus on that falls back to the employee and to whether you’re going to participate. Now on the vendor side or the employer’s side, you have to select which companies you’re going to work with to offer medical benefits. You have to determine also what portion of that you’re going to subsidise.

Chris Acostandei (28:49): 

Yeah, I would say especially for large corporations, they do a lot of acquisitions and a lot of those acquisitions are coming with plans, benefits, and third party vendors that you actually have to carry on for a number of years until that merge happens a hundred percent. So then you have to deal with multiple vendors for the same dental plan or multiple plans. And then you have people that they transfer from one to another one. That transfer can happen in the middle of the period. So you can imagine how complex this can get, and this is just on the medical field, but I mean they are, the same thing goes with dental plans, vision plans. In addition to that, they are flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts which are being offered, and these are governed by the IRS.

Luisa Rollenhagen (29:42):

I’m just going to jump in really quickly to explain for those who might not know, that the IRS stands for Internal Revenue Service and is the Federal Tax Authority of the United States. Sorry, please continue, Chris.

Chris Acostandei (29:53): 

Some of these benefits are actually pre-tax benefits. Some of them are post-tax benefits and they’re not regulated at the federal level. You have states that will say, okay, health spending account, for me it’s a pre-tax deduction. You can reduce your taxable wages for the state, but at the federal level you cannot do that. And also think that those fees and those deductions are contributions from the employees but also from the employers. And then when you, let’s say you merge that to a vendor, you have to give them employee contributions, employer contributions. So all of this, it’s even bringing more complexity into these health benefits.

Dawn Wautier (30:35):

This is really a complexity that if you’re coming from outside of the United States, that is probably really surprising. It’s just how cumbersome it is to stand up a company and if you’re going to offer kind of healthcare or etc. And all that goes into that and just the administration and it’s probably very surprising.

Luisa Rollenhagen (30:56):

I can imagine. So what about pensions? I’d imagine that it’s similar to healthcare in that the pension system is mainly privatised.

Dawn Wautier (31:04):

It is totally up to the employee if they want to participate in a plan that the employer offers. So that means that if you’re a living paycheck to paycheck, which a large number of Americans do, is that you have this tendency to put that off and not think, especially if you’re 25 years old, you’re not thinking about your retirement. You’re thinking about, how do I pay the rent? And what that has meant is that we have a lot of retirees or seniors that are not financially stable. And so governments and the secure act is being introduced is I think an in part trying to help Americans prepare for retirement income. Because the other thing is that we all pay social security, just like every country pretty much has social security. The United States has social security, but as people are living longer, that social security is not going to be available. What you’re doing is you’re funding your parents at this point, so you are not likely to be able to have the social security that you are paying into today. And so secure act, I think also, and Chris can explain more about this, is really looking to help Americans be able to afford to stop working at some point in their life.

Chris Acostandei (32:23): 

Yeah, so with the Secure Act 2.0, what the government is trying to do is to make it more affordable for employees to save money. And there are different parts that they kick in on different dates. So there are some requirements, they’re already in place and some requirements that would kick in, for example, would allow employees that are between 60 and 63 to have a much larger contribution deferred from their paychecks. Now they’re going up to $10,000 and that definitely is going to help. And they’re also looking to help small businesses now because typically those employees that work for small businesses, they cannot afford to make contributions to a saving plan. Also, if you as a small business, you are trying to maybe reach out to a vendor for services, it would cost you a lot of money. So they’re trying to make that more convenient and affordable for them.

Luisa Rollenhagen (33:23):

Right, I see. So it’s offering greater incentives for employees to contribute to retirement plans, while also allowing smaller businesses to offer plans in the first place. We’re going to start wrapping up because I think we’ve really covered a lot of ground today. But before I let you go, I’d like to end our chat by asking you one of my favourite questions. What do you personally love about working in payroll in the United States?

Chris Acostandei (33:49): 

What I like about working in payroll? Well, I think payroll keeps you extremely busy. So your day is going really fast. You have tight deadlines, you’re never going to be bored in payroll, especially in the United States. As I said, pay frequency, weekly payroll is very common. Quite frankly, some states will not allow you to pay hourly employees on a monthly basis. So that’s not even a discussion here in the US. And keeping up the base and the challenges makes things very interesting.

Dawn Wautier (34:21):

What I love about working in payroll is the purpose, and we really take that very, very seriously here because we understand there are so many Americans that live paycheck to paycheck. Paying on time and accurately, well, the consequence of not paying on time and accurately, could be the difference between a child getting lunch, an elderly person getting their medication, and the purpose in that is so important. And so we really feel that, first of all, we are part of the companies that we work for and we feel like an extension of their teams. I’m proud to represent those brands, because they are so relevant in the market and just knowing that, you know, we are helping people to be able to put food on their table and to provide for their families. That’s really what’s meaningful to me.

Luisa Rollenhagen (35:15):

That’s really true and such an important aspect of payroll that often gets overlooked when we talk about this profession. Dawn and Chris, thank you so much for sharing your time and your expertise with us today. I found it really interesting to learn more about how individual states are so different and function like mini countries, each operating with various bilateral agreements and multi-jurisdictional regulations. I definitely got the impression that the US is a country where it really pays off to have an expert guiding you through this landscape. I hope you got a bit of a deeper insight into how payroll in the United States works today. If this episode has piqued your interest or your company is considering expanding into the USA and you want to learn more about payroll there, please go to the ADP USA website adp.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to learn more about payroll around the world with each new episode. You’ve been listening to ADP Payroll Around The World. Produced by ADP and Storythings.