Year End & Year Start Overview: 2025-2026
Revamp your year-end processes with new playbooks and enhanced transparency for 2026!
Year-End, Reinvented.
This isn’t a refresh — it’s a reinvention. We’ve taken the most complex, high-stakes time of year and rebuilt it for clarity and control. Year-End is fundamentally different from any other quarter-end, and our processes now reflect that.
This year we’re releasing dedicated playbooks to guide your teams through everything that’s new: the Year End Playbook (available October 20th), the Quarter End Playbook (available end of November), and the Year Start Playbook (available Nov 12th).
With 2026 comes more native transparency and flexibility that makes every step easier to understand. You’ll experience updated policies and product improvements across employee form availability, balancing, filing, tax payments, and corrections. Check will ensure timely agency filings, while optimizing to provide your customers’ maximum time to provide up-to-date information. Our timelines as a result will look different this year end, with more rolling updates to document uploads and balancing adjustments, rather than rigid release dates.
What Happens During Year End and Year Start
Year End marks the transition between tax years, requiring accurate information capture to prevent amendments, penalties, and extra support work. Year Start presents a significant growth opportunity for payroll providers, with over 30% of annual growth occurring in Q1.
The payroll year aligns with the calendar year. Employers track taxes and submit quarterly filings every three months. Year End intensifies this process—employers must complete both 4th quarter filings and annual filings. Critical annual reporting includes W-2 forms for employees, 1099 forms for contractors, and annual returns at the state, local, and federal levels. Tax agencies recognize this demanding period and extend deadlines for many annual filings, with most due by the last day of February.
Year End also requires employers to finalize special adjustments, such as manual payments made outside the payroll system, imputed income from benefits like Group Term Life (GTL), the value of company-provided property (e.g., vehicles), and any final bonuses or stock payouts.
As the calendar flips to the new year, wage bases and annual limits reset. Contributions to plans such as 401(k)s and HSAs start calculating anew, introducing a fresh cycle of payroll deductions and benefit contributions.
Year Start is a pivotal time in the payroll industry. Many employers switch payroll systems during this period, driving growth and new client onboarding. This creates an influx of data migrations and new system setups as businesses prepare for the upcoming payroll year.
For more information on our policies and processes for Quarter End, Year End, and Year Start, review the corresponding playbooks in our Help Center.
Important Dates You Should Know
October and November: Prepping for Year End
- October 22nd: Check will host a Year End Webinar, with recording available after, and publish the updated Year End Playbook.
- November 14th (Embedded Setup Only): Last Day to submit switcher companies for Embedded Setup to have a payday prior to Year End. Any companies submitted after this date will be assigned a January start date
- November 19th: Check will host a Year Start Webinar, with recording available after, and publish the updated Year Start Playbook.
December: Final 2025 Go-Lives and Year End Prep
- December 3rd: Check will host a Quarter End Webinar, with recording available after, and publish the updated Quarter End Playbook.
- December 3rd: Submit all corrections to Check for earnings outside our system or corrected payrolls. This deadline gives us time to process corrections before December 31st. We'll process Q4 corrections submitted after this date as quickly as possible and attempt to complete them by December 31st.
- December 5th (Embedded Setup Only): Last first payday for companies coming from a prior provider in 2025. All other companies with YTDs will be assigned January 1st paydays
- December 25th: Check and Federal Holiday, not a Payday
- December 31st: Final payday of 2025. Submit all last-minute payrolls or voids by this date to ensure they're included in the original 2025 filings. Note: Corrections have a 20-business-day SLA. We can't guarantee corrections submitted before January 1st will be included in the original filings.
January: Quarter End and Year Start Month
- January 1st: Happy New Year! Check and Federal holiday, not a Payday
- January 2nd: First Payday of 2026, kickoff of Quarter End and Year End filing period
- January 12th: Q4 Quarter End draft tax documents posted to the Company Documents product, showing employer data that will be filed for Q4 tax returns. Year End draft company tax documents will also be available at this time if due in January.
- January 19th: Check will review all companies that were ineligible for filing initially. We'll now file for these companies if they've resolved their NSF. We cannot guarantee on-time filings for this group.
- January 24th: W-2s and 1099s will be available at Check's employee and contractor document endpoints
- January 30th: Final Check review of companies ineligible for filing. We'll attempt to file for any remaining companies that have resolved their NSF. We cannot guarantee on-time filings for this group.
- January 31st: Last day to distribute W-2s to employees and 1099s to contractors to remain compliant. This is also the final day of Quarter End filing 🎉
February and March: Remaining Year End and Amendment Period
- February 2nd: We will begin processing amendments and refiles for all changes submitted after January 1st, including company filings, W-2Cs, and 1099-NEC corrections. All corrections and amendments are subject to our 20-day SLA, though our team will do our best to start processing them before February 3rd.
- February 9th: Draft tax documents for remaining Year End filings due by the end of February will be posted to the Company Documents product. This later deadline mostly impacts wage reporting and annual reconciliation filings for local tax agencies, as well as a small set of annual reconciliations for states (AR, IA, MI, ME, NJ).
- February 28th: Final day of Year End filing 🎉
- March 1st: Deadline to submit corrections needed before the April 15th personal tax filing deadline. This deadline accounts for the 20-day SLA and allows time for any back-and-forth communication. Note: We can't guarantee this timeline if Check doesn't have all necessary information.
Reminder on How Holidays Impact Payrolls
Year End includes several holidays that affect payroll approval times and when funds are received. A detailed guide is available here. Key holidays to be aware of:
- Veteran’s Day: November 11th
- Thanksgiving Day: November 27th
- Christmas Day: December 25th
- New Year’s Day: January 1st
- Martin Luther King Day: January 19th
- President’s Day: February 16th
2026 Tax Policy Updates
Below is a snapshot of important changes that will go into effect as of January 1, 2026. This is not a comprehensive list of 2026 changes as many are routine (i.e. rate changes) and will be fully supported by Check with no additional action needed.
- Minnesota Paid Family Medical Leave: Minnesota has enacted a new paid leave program, which is going into effect on January 1st, 2026. Eligible employers and employees will contribute to the program via a 0.88% payroll tax (or a reduced premium rate for smaller employers). New setup parameters will soon be available in Check Onboard and Console for this tax.
- Secure 2.0 Section 603 (required Roth catch-up contributions for high earners): Section 603 of the Secure 2.0 Act requires that high earners (who earned above $145K in FICA wages in the previous tax year) are only eligible to make "catch-up" contributions to 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plans as Roth contributions (post-tax contributions). Check intends to support this, but we have not finalized how this will be facilitated. Stay turned to release notes for more and an update here when complete.
One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)
On July 4, 2025, Public Law 119-21—known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) — was signed into law. The OBBBA introduces new and enhanced tax deductions, many available starting in 2025, including:
- New income tax deductions for qualified overtime compensation, tips
- An increase in the standard deduction and the child tax credit
- An enhanced deduction for seniors
- An increase in the limit on the itemized deduction for state and local taxes
The IRS created a webpage with more information for employees who want to update their tax withholding before the end of 2025. Please feel free to share this resource with any inquiring customer. (https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/how-to-update-withholding-to-account-for-tax-law-changes-for-2025).
The IRS will not make changes to certain information returns or withholding tables for calendar year 2025 due to the OBBBA. Form W-2, existing Forms 1099, Form 941, and "other payroll return forms" will remain unchanged for 2025. The IRS will also not update federal income tax withholding tables for OBBBA provisions for 2025.
Employers and payroll providers should continue to use current procedures for reporting and withholding, which Check will follow. The IRS made these decisions to avoid disruptions during tax filing season.
The IRS is working on guidance and updated forms for calendar year 2026, including changes to how tips and overtime pay are reported. The IRS will coordinate with employers and payroll providers to ensure a smooth transition.
Last updated on October 20, 2025