Elements for the US

Elements are the building blocks that help determine the payment of base pay, benefits, absences, and other earnings and deductions.

Elements can represent:

Earnings, such as salary, wages, and bonuses
Compensation, such as employee stock purchase and insurance plans
Absences from work
Tangible items distributed to persons, such as tools, uniforms, mobile phones, or computers
Statutory deductions, such as taxes, voluntary deductions, contributions to charities, or savings plans, and involuntary deductions, such as court orders and pretax deductions
Employer taxes and other employer liabilities

Note: When you define an element, you can enter up to 50 characters for its name. If you enter more, the task automatically truncates it.When choosing an element name, don't include any part of the secondary classification name. This can cause conflicts with predefined balances. For example, when creating an overtime earnings element, don't use Overtime for any element or reporting name.

Some elements are predefined. You can create others to meet your requirements.

Predefined Tax Elements

The payroll process uses the following predefined elements for taxes. You can't make any changes to these predefined elements. However, you must create eligibility records for them.

US Taxation
City Miscellaneous Employee Tax
City Miscellaneous Employer Tax
County Mental Health Tax Not Taken
Family Leave Insurance Employee Tax
Family Leave Insurance Employee Tax Not Taken
Federal Income Tax
Federal Income Tax Not Taken
Federal Supplemental Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax
Head Tax Not Taken
Medicare Employee Tax
Medicare Employee Tax Not Taken
Medicare Employer Tax
Residence City Tax
Residence City Income Tax Not Taken
Residence County Tax
Residence County Income Tax Not Taken
Residence County Mental Health Tax
Residence School District Tax
Residence School Tax Not Taken
Residence State Income Tax
Residence State Income Tax Not Taken
Residence State Supplemental Income Tax
Social Security Employee Tax
Social Security Employee Tax Not Taken
Social Security Employer Tax
State Disability Insurance Employee Tax
State Disability Insurance Employee Tax Not Taken
State Disability Insurance Employer Tax
State Transit Tax
State Transit Tax Not Taken
State Unemployment Insurance Employee Tax
State Unemployment Insurance Employee Tax Not Taken
State Unemployment Insurance Employer Tax
Voluntary Plan Employee Disability Insurance Tax
Voluntary Plan Employee Disability Insurance Tax Not Taken
Voluntary Plan Employer Disability Insurance Tax
Work City Tax
Work City Income Tax Not Taken
Work County Tax
Work County Income Tax Not Taken
Work County Mental Health Tax
Work County School District Tax
Work Head Tax
Work School Tax Not Taken
Work State Income Tax
Work State Income Tax Not Taken
Work State Supplemental Income Tax

Elements and Element Templates

Each element belongs to a primary classification, according to its purpose, which determines the template you use to create it. The template creates the elements and associated items required for payroll processing. You can create as many earnings and deductions as you require using the Elements task.

The element definition templates provide you with an intuitive user interface and help you manage the creation of different types of elements and their associated objects, including:

Questions you answer to define the details of the element you want to create
Objects that the template generates, which can include indirect elements, input values, formulas, balances, and other items as illustrated in the following table

For further info, see Indirect Elements for the US in the Help Center.

The element definition process gets a set of rules from the template and processes the predefined template structure to create appropriate data.

Note: The template you use to create elements also depends on the product you enabled for the US. You set this through the Manage Features by Country or Territory task.For example, if you select Payroll, you use a template that generates all the items required for payroll processing. If you selected Human Resources or None, you use a basic template that generates the elements only.For further info, see Select Country Extensions for the US in the Help Center.

You can configure any of the generated items to match your specific business requirements.

For example, you can add input values, edit the formulas, or add a status processing rule to use a different formula for certain assignment statuses.

The following illustrates how the different options contribute to element creation.

What you can set	What it does
Priority Range	Primary classifications have a priority range. When you define an element, you can override the default processing priority with another number from the range. Use this to establish the order in which the element processes with respect to other elements in the primary classification range.
Input Values	Define the entry values available on each entry of this element, such as hours worked or amount.
Element Eligibility Records	You must define the eligibility criteria a worker's employment record must meet to be eligible for the element. For example you can use grade, payroll, salary basis, or organization as eligibility criteria.
Status Processing Rules	Identify the formula the payroll run uses to process the element, and how to handle the formula results.
Related Formulas and Related Elements	Identify additional elements and formulas created by the template for payroll processing.
Related Balances	Identify the balances created by the element template for this element.

Note: The template creates each of these components, with the exception of the eligibility rules. You must create those yourself. You can add additional inputs and formulas according to your requirements.

Puerto Rico Elements

To identify deduction elements belonging to Puerto Rico, create a State input value in the results element and populate it with a value of 72. For this configuration, select a Reference of State under Default Entry Values and Validation for the results element. Define the State input value with a display sequence of 1.

Modify your fast formula and status processing rules to ensure the correct value is passed to the results element.

Do this only for deduction elements that feed these Puerto Rico W2 balances.

W2 Territory Charitable Contributions
W2 Territory Government Retirement Fund
W2 Territory Government Employee Savings Plan
W2 Territory 401k