Hiring in St. Lucia? The AU-1 14-Day Deadline

Onboarding a new employee is a busy stretch — contracts, orientation, setting up equipment, working out the first pay run. Buried in that rush is a statutory obligation that's easy to overlook and unforgiving on timing: the AU-1, the form that registers a new hire with the tax authority. It's expected to be filed within 14 days of the employee starting.

Fourteen days sounds like plenty. In practice, it's exactly the window where a new hire is least top-of-mind for paperwork, which is why the AU-1 is one of the most commonly missed employer filings in St. Lucia. This guide explains what it is, why it matters, and how to make sure it never slips.

What the AU-1 is for

When someone joins your payroll, the tax system needs to know they exist — that a new employment relationship has begun and that PAYE deductions will start flowing for this person. The AU-1 is that registration. It's the front door to the whole compliance lifecycle: it's what makes the employee a known participant in the PAYE system before their earnings and withholdings start showing up in your monthly remittances and, eventually, your annual return.

Skip it or file it late, and you've started the employment relationship on an out-of-compliance footing, with the rest of the year's filings referencing a hire that was never properly registered.

The 14-day window

The AU-1 is due within 14 days of the hire. That's a short, hard clock, and it starts ticking on day one — not on the first payday, not at month-end. Because onboarding energy is focused on getting the person productive, the registration deadline can quietly pass before anyone thinks about it.

Two weeks also means you often can't batch it with your monthly payroll cycle. If you hire early in the month, waiting for your regular end-of-month payroll routine could blow the deadline. The AU-1 frequently needs to be handled on hire, as part of onboarding, rather than folded into your monthly rhythm.

A simple onboarding checklist that keeps the AU-1 on time

1. Treat registration as a day-one task

Make the AU-1 part of your onboarding sequence, right alongside the employment contract — not something you'll "get to before payday." If it's tied to the moment of hire, the 14-day clock takes care of itself.

2. Collect the employee's details up front

Gather the personal and tax information you'll need to register the employee during onboarding, when they're already filling out paperwork. Chasing details a week later is how deadlines get missed.

3. Set the deadline the moment they start

The day someone accepts and has a start date, you know the AU-1 due date. Put it where you'll see it. Don't rely on remembering — rely on a trigger tied to the hire.

4. File early, not on day 14

As with any statutory deadline, aim to complete it with days to spare. That protects you against missing information, holidays, or an unexpectedly busy week.

5. Keep the confirmation with the employee's file

Once filed, store the proof alongside the rest of the employee's records so it's there when you need it — and so their subsequent payslips, remittances, and year-end figures all trace back to a properly registered start.

Why this one gets missed so often

The AU-1 is uniquely easy to forget because of when it lands. Monthly PAYE and the annual return are recurring — they're on the calendar, they repeat, you build habits around them. The AU-1 is event-driven and irregular: it only fires when you happen to hire, its clock is short, and it competes for attention with everything else involved in bringing a new person on board. There's no monthly rhythm to catch it.

The fix is to make hiring itself trigger the registration, automatically, rather than depending on someone to remember an unusual deadline in a busy week.

How unStatute keeps the AU-1 on time

unStatute is built natively on the St. Lucia Income Tax Act (Chap. 15.02), and it treats onboarding as the start of the compliance lifecycle. When you add a new employee, it prepares the AU-1 from the details you enter during setup, so registration is generated as part of hiring rather than remembered afterward. And because that same employee record then feeds their payslips, your monthly PAYE remittances, and the annual TD5/P11, a hire that's registered correctly on day one stays clean all the way through the year.

For payroll bureaus and accountants managing hires across several employers, that matters even more — a dedicated Bureau tier keeps every client's new-hire registrations organised in one place. The paperwork the law requires, filed in minutes, starting from the very first day of employment.

If a 14-day deadline in the middle of a hiring rush sounds like a trap waiting to spring, start a free 14-day trial at unstatute.com — no card required — and let new hires register themselves as you onboard them.