On December 3, 2025, at 11 a.m. PST, Notice Ninja will host its third annual powerhouse employment tax webinar, once again featuring Mindy Mayo, Tax Managing Director at KPMG, alongside Rick Pinkerman, COO and co-founder of Notice Ninja.
This highly anticipated session, titled “Employment Tax 2026: Trends, Traps, and Transformation Ahead,” is more than just a look into what’s coming — it’s a strategic advantage for anyone involved in payroll tax operations, compliance, or employment tax planning. Whether you’re in a corporate tax department, work for a payroll provider, manage a private equity portfolio, or oversee compliance in a financial institution or PEO, this is the session that will give you the edge you need.
In last year’s 2024 session, “A Road, Not a Journey: Payroll Tax Compliance in 2025,” Mindy and Rick warned attendees of several key employment tax shifts coming in 2025, and they were right.
Here are five key predictions from that session and how they played out in 2025:
✔️ Increased Volume and Complexity of Tax Notices
Prediction: Agencies would ramp up notice volume due to system automation and cross-agency reconciliations.
Reality: Clients saw a 20% increase in notices in 2025, particularly driven by multi-jurisdiction audits and penalty notices tied to missed rate changes and amended return delays.
✔️ Remote Work and State Wage Allocations Would Create Headaches
Prediction: Hybrid work would complicate SUI and SIT allocations, triggering misalignment between W-2s and quarterly filings.
Reality: Many employers struggled to track hybrid employee work locations, resulting in increased state-level discrepancy notices and audit triggers.
✔️ Amended Returns and “Trailing Liabilities” Would Surge
Prediction: Delayed processing of amended returns and post-termination liabilities (COBRA, equity, bonuses) would create compliance gaps.
Reality: Clients dealing with M&A activity, restructures, and workforce reductions saw penalties from late filings and underreported wages.
✔️ Compliance Visibility Would Be More Important Than Ever
Prediction: Employers would need to move from reactive to proactive visibility with systems tracking rate changes, POAs, and notice history.
Reality: Companies without notice management platforms struggled with missed deadlines and escalated penalties. Those with proactive tracking avoided many headaches.
✔️ Federal and State Coordination Would Increase Penalties
Prediction: States would align more closely with federal data and become less forgiving.
Reality: States like California, New York, and Washington aggressively pursued cross-state penalty assessments and rejected abatement requests with less flexibility.
One of the most resonant quotes from Mindy Mayo in last year’s session still rings true:
“The only thing that doesn’t change in employment tax is that everything changes.”
And as we approach 2026, with a possible change in federal administration, expiring provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and shifting rules for remote work, the landscape is more volatile than ever.
In the 2025 edition of the webinar, Mindy and Rick will explore:
To help you take action on what you learn during the webinar, we’ve developed a brand-new, strategy-first guide and it’s available to webinar attendees.
The 2026 Employment Tax Readiness Playbook
A practical, executive-level field guide for payroll and compliance teams navigating notices, multi-state risk, remote work, and audit triggers.
Inside, you'll find:
“If you don’t know where your people are, neither does the state — until they audit you.” – Mindy Mayo
For three years running, this event has grown in both size and significance. It’s where strategy meets practicality, blending expert insights with battle-tested tools to keep you ahead of audits, notices, and compliance traps.
If you’re a payroll service provider, PEO, corporate tax leader, private equity firm, or financial institution — this is your chance to hear directly from the experts about how to prepare your organization for the seismic shifts ahead.
🔗 Register Now — and bring your team.
You can’t afford to miss the future of employment tax compliance.
RELATED POSTs