Senior Manager, Payroll Tax

Purpose:The Senior Manager, Payroll Tax & Garnishments oversees payroll tax operations for both U.S. and Canadian entities, ensuring accurate system maintenance and timely responses to tax-related inquiries. This role also ensures garnishment processing is consistently compliant with federal and state regulations, mitigating the risk of penalties or default judgments.

Essential Functions:

• Manages the outsourced ADP payroll tax function and garnishments to ensure compliance; supports with investigating tax issues
• Assists ADP tax team to complete year-end processes within ADP system; complete YE processes and adjustments in PeopleSoft
• Manages quarter-end processes and quarterly tax updates from PeopleSoft; runs test payroll runs in PeopleSoft to ensure quarterly tax updates are completed successfully, coordinating with IT to move updates to production

• Participates in systems upgrades and testing for tax and garnishment updates, serving as the liaison between the company and the third-party garnishment processor, and resolving and payroll issues; participates in system upgrade design and process testing and troubleshoots various HRMS & Payroll issues within PeopleSoft HRMS

• Supports weekly tax transmissions to a third-party tax processing service and ensures timely and accurate tax funding on a weekly basis
• Performs third-party sick pay adjustments and TEFRA adjustments
• Assists with HR Help Desk inquiries such as job verifications and unemployment claims; works with ADP and Equifax service team as necessary
• Gathers data for internal and external audits related to payroll tax; responds to tax related inquiries from agencies and team members

• Evaluates garnishment processes to identify and correct inefficiencies; manage implementation of processes improvements.
• Coordinates the reconciliation of garnishment disbursement files and manages funding requests in collaboration with Treasury.
• Works with the Legal department to resolve garnishment legal issues including default judgments; works with Payroll HRMS to ensure that reinstatements are processed timely and correctly for union and non-union associates
• Maintains all files and correspondence with third-party vendor and respective law offices, tax jurisdictions, IRS, bankruptcy courts, etc.

Reporting Relationship: The Senior Manager, Payroll Tax & Garnishments reports to the Director of Payroll

Minimum Qualifications, Knowledge, Skills, and Work Environment:

• Education and Experience: The combination of education and professional experience must exceed 6 years:
  • In a leadership role: Requires 2 years of experience supervising a team of payroll professionals engaged in executing payroll tax and garnishment programs
  • In a technical role: Requires 6-8 years of payroll experience engaged in delivering payroll tax and garnishment programs
    • A bachelor’s degree in a program related to the functional area can count for 3 of the 6-year requirement
    • An MBA or a master’s level degree in a program related to the functional area can count for an additional 2 years of 6-year requirement
  • In the industry: 3-5 years of Hospitality, F&B and/or Retail experience
  • Must have at least 4 years of experience processing payroll in a high-volume environment
• Specialized Training:
  • Training that leads to very strong knowledge of state, federal, and provincial payroll tax and garnishment laws, as well as wage and hour regulations
• Specialized Skillset/Competencies/Traits
  • Requires PeopleSoft HRMS experience including Query, implementation or upgrade experience a plus
  • Proficiency in Microsoft Office
  • Requires the ability to maintain confidential data and ensure that correspondence with sensitive data is done in a manner that adheres to compliant methodology
  • Exceptional customer service skills and a keen eye for detail
  • Possesses strong business acumen and a forward-thinking approach to payroll management, with the ability to evaluate long-term impacts and drive alignment with organizational goals.
  • Demonstrated history of understanding the needs of the business, stakeholders, the employee population and individual circumstances
  • Demonstrated history of maintaining positive work environments through coaching, developing, and leading teams to achieve common goals
• Location: This role is based at the F&B Center of Excellence in Bethesda, MD