Price the gap between your sheet's wage base and the 2026 figure

An Oregon employer with 18 workers above the cap is $1,036.80 short on state unemployment tax this year, and the payroll spreadsheet shows nothing wrong. That is the whole problem with running SUI out of a sheet: the formula is right, the rate is right, and the one number that moved -- the taxable wage base -- is the one number nobody re-typed in January.

Every state sets a SUI (state unemployment insurance) taxable wage base: the slice of each worker's annual pay that the tax applies to. Above that line, the employer owes nothing more for that worker. The line is re-set every autumn and takes effect on January 1. A bookkeeper who copies last year's tab, or a controller who inherited a template from the person before them, carries last year's cap forward without noticing, because nothing in the sheet complains.

Oregon is the clean example. The 2025 taxable wage base was $54,300. For 2026 it is $56,700. That is $2,400 of wages per worker that the carried-over sheet simply never taxes. At a 2.4% experience rate that is $57.60 per worker. Across 18 workers who earn more than both caps, it is $1,036.80 of SUI that was never remitted -- before the state adds interest and a late-payment assessment on the quarterly return.

It runs the other way too. A sheet carrying a cap that is higher than the real 2026 figure overpays: the money sits with the state until someone files an amended return to get it back. Either direction, the sheet is silent.

SUI Wage Base Check 2026 is a browser extension and a free web page that do one thing. You pick your state, type the taxable wage base your spreadsheet is using and your assigned 2026 SUI experience rate, and say how many workers are paid above both caps. It returns the official 2026 taxable wage base, the wages per worker your sheet never taxed, the tax gap per worker, the total, a plain verdict -- underpaid or overpaid -- and the number of days until the caps change again.

Twelve states ship in the table with their official 2026 figures: California $7,000, Florida $7,000, Arizona $8,000, Texas $9,000, Illinois $14,250, Minnesota $14,500, Colorado $30,600, Nevada $43,700, Utah $50,700, Oregon $56,700, New Jersey $58,300 and Washington $78,200. For any other state there is an "Other state" option where you type the official figure yourself and still get the priced gap.

The obvious question is why a chatbot will not do this. Wage bases are published state by state in the autumn and change again every January 1. A chatbot answers from training text and will hand you the prior year's cap with complete confidence and no date stamp. At least 4 of these 12 states moved their taxable wage base for 2026 -- Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey and Oregon -- so the odds of a stale answer are not small. The extension holds the 2026 figures and, more usefully, converts the difference into dollars you can carry into a conversation with your accountant.

The check is free, with no key and no run limit: all 12 caps, your own figure for any other state, and the full priced gap. The paid layer sits on a different axis -- ownership and repetition. Twenty-nine dollars once adds a .csv export you keep with the quarterly filing file, and a January 1, 2027 alarm that re-asks for the new cap when the whole table resets.

For scale: a US payroll accountant charges $75 to $150 an hour to re-check state wage-base caps, and this check takes under a minute. Run your own state first; if your sheet's cap matches the 2026 figure, the tool says so and you are done in one screen.