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6 min read

How to Use PEO Services for US Expansion

PEO

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Author

Shannon Ongaro

Published

May 02, 2024

Last Update

January 23, 2025

Table of Contents

What is a PEO?

Challenges of expanding into the US market

Using a PEO to grow your US team

How Deel supports global business expansion

Key takeaways
  1. Companies can face substantial challenges when entering the US market, such as complying with state-specific labor laws, payroll regulations, taxation requirements, and benefits administration.
  2. Access to HR experts who can provide guidance on labor laws and help manage healthcare enrollments and employee queries is key to successful expansion.
  3. With Deel PEO, domestic and international companies can simplify their US expansion by handing off HR, payroll, and compliance tasks, focusing instead on their team and growth.

Expanding your business to the United States is an exciting milestone, but it’s no small feat. Navigating complex local labor laws, multi-state payroll regulations, and tax requirements can quickly become overwhelming for growing companies.

Deel is a trusted partner for businesses of all sizes, simplifying workforce expansion with tailored HR, payroll, and compliance solutions across 150+ countries.

In this article, we’ll show you how Deel PEO can streamline your entry into the US market, saving time, minimizing risks, and enabling you to focus on what matters most—scaling your team and business.

With Deel, you don’t just expand; you thrive with peace of mind knowing your operations are compliant and optimized for success.

What is a PEO?

professional employer organization (PEO) is a third-party company that provides outsourced payroll and HR solutions to small and medium-sized client companies. Services often include managing payroll, HR tasks, benefits administration, workers’ compensation, tax administration, claims assistance, and ensuring regulatory compliance.

When a company partners with a PEO, they enter into a co-employment relationship. This means the PEO provider shares in some of the company’s legal and financial liability for the services provided. 

To use a PEO, companies must:

  • Have a US entity
  • Be registered in each state they hire employees in
  • Meet minimum headcount requirements (in certain states, a minimum headcount may apply for insurance reasons. For example, employers based in Maryland and Maine require at least 50 employees to be eligible for PEO medical plans)

Learn more in our Guide to Professional Employer Organizations.

Read our state-by-state PEO guides

Challenges of expanding into the US market

While building and scaling a US team is a top priority for many small businesses, market entry is often overwhelming due to the varying state-by-state requirements for compliant workforce management. This includes:

  • Labor and employment laws: Understanding and adapting to layered federal, state, and local regulations, including anti-discrimination laws, pay transparency laws, and termination rules
  • State-specific payroll management: Establishing a payroll system that handles diverse state laws on minimum wages, taxes, and withholdings, ensuring accurate and timely employee payments
  • Taxation and reporting compliance: Navigating federal and state tax compliance obligations, along with meticulous reporting requirements to avoid penalties and legal issues
  • Benefits administration: Designing competitive, compliant benefits packages that conform to regulations like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
  • Attracting and retaining talent: Building a strong employer brand and offering competitive compensation packages to attract skilled workers in a competitive market while managing cultural integration
Deel PEO
The market leader in PEO services for remote teams
Deel PEO makes managing your US team easier. Offload compliance risks and HR admin to us, so you can focus on scaling your business across all 50 states and beyond.

Using a PEO to grow your US team

As an all-in-one payroll and HR solution for global teams, Deel is designed to scale with growing companies. When it comes to US expansion, Deel PEO offers a simple and streamlined path to success by taking on benefits administration, payroll, tax reporting, and common human resources tasks. 

Here’s a closer look at Deel PEO services for companies expanding in the US:

Benefits administration and compliance

Deel PEO enables you to provide comprehensive benefits while reducing the administrative load and keeping everything compliant. It’s a win-win if you want to focus on your business growth and leave the complex benefits tasks to the experts—your employees get great perks, and you get peace of mind.

With Deel PEO, you get access to big-company benefits for less, with streamlined enrollment and administration, COBRA administration and compliance, and ACA compliance

Primary benefits include:

Ancillary plans include:

  • Basic, whole, and term life insurance
  • Short-term and long-term disability
  • Critical illness protection
  • Hospital indemnity
  • Accident protection

While Deel handles open enrollment and ongoing benefits administration, clients can also retain their own medical benefits or third-party 401(k) provider, though these would be managed separately from Deel.

Payroll and tax administration

US payroll and tax requirements will vary depending on which state—and sometimes even municipality—you hire employees in. For example, in New York, the minimum wage is higher in New York City, Winchester, and Long Island than in the rest of the state.

Instead of burdening your team with the time and resource-intensive task of staying on top of payroll and tax regulations in each state, you can leave the work to Deel.

Deel PEO’s payroll services include:

  • Accurately processing payroll
  • Federal and state tax calculations, filings, and payments
  • Administering Form W-2 to employees 
  • Form I-9 management (submissions, approvals, and rejections)
  • Generating and filing Form 1094-C and Form 1095-C 
  • Distributing direct deposits and payslips
  • Ensuring tax code and payroll compliance in all states and municipalities
  • Instant payroll adjustments and extended cut-off dates
Platform Tour
See how US Payroll works
Run US payroll in all 50 states for your team. Deel helps you with everything you need as a payroll expert, from off-cycle adjustments to tax form filings. Click to launch an instant demo of our top platform features.

HR administration and compliance

Deel PEO includes comprehensive HR administration and compliance to simplify workforce management in the US, enabling you to expand in lockstep with local, state, and federal laws.

Seamless onboarding

Deel simplifies the employee onboarding process, making it a smooth and welcoming experience for new hires. This includes self-service portals for employees, easy-to-follow checklists, and automating the collection of necessary compliance documents to ensure everything aligns with their local labor and employment laws.

See also: How to Use AI in Employee Onboarding: 7 Key Use Cases to Drive Success

Expert support

With Deel, you have access to in-house HR experts who can assist in building policies, providing labor law guidance, managing benefits and healthcare enrollments, and answering employee questions. This expert guidance is invaluable for understanding and managing sensitive employment issues and mitigating risks as you expand.

Compliant documentation 

When it comes to creating compliant documentation and processes (employee handbooks, job descriptions, HR policies), Deel helps your company stay compliant with state and federal HR laws. For example, you can tailor state-level leave policies so they not only comply with local laws but also meet the specific needs of your employees.

Deel also provides all state-required training resources, such as New York’s sexual harassment training, and keeps your company informed about compliance updates, including changes to minimum wage laws across different states.

Free download: US Employment Contract Template

Employee claims and reporting 

Deel PEO handles workers' compensation and unemployment administration on your behalf, reducing the administrative burden on your company and helping to manage these essential aspects of employee welfare. Companies also receive support for claims related to unemployment, workers’ compensation, and workplace harassment. 

Learn more about State Unemployment Insurance (SUI) rates for 2025.

Deel also manages compliance with OSHA reporting requirements for serious incidents like fatalities or significant injuries, ensuring all necessary reports are filed within the required timelines.

Learn more by watching Navigating Employment Law Compliance, Benefits, and HR in the US.

Deel PEO simplified and accelerated our hiring process in the US, cutting costs by 50%. Now, managing compliance for our US-based team members is fast, easy, and cost-effective.

Pierre Puig,

Head of HR, Sim & Cure

How Deel supports global business expansion

With Deel, clients not only have a trusted PEO provider but a complete global hiring solution. Here’s a look at some of the additional services and features that support companies as they expand into the US and beyond:

Entity setup and state registration

In the US, entity setup and registration requirements—including filing fees, compliance requirements, how business activity is determined, and processing times—vary by state. If you don’t already have an entity set up in the US or need support with state registration, Deel can help. 

See also: How Can I Expand My Business in the US: 3 Options for Startups

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Data and reporting tools

Deel PEO clients have access to detailed reporting tools that can be customized to fit a variety of requirements. You’ll be able to view all employee data (with editable access controls), as well as custom reports that cover benefit usage, payroll, start dates, and more.

Customer support

With Deel PEO, you always receive white-glove support, which includes a dedicated customer success manager (CSM), implementation specialists, and 24/7 in-app chat with a {{DEEL_RESPONSE_TIME}} response time to guarantee fast and high-quality support.

Continuous compliance

Deel’s Compliance Hub has three powerful features to help strengthen your international workforce compliance. Monthly Workforce Insights analyzes your workforce data to proactively identify and alert you to non-compliance risks. The Compliance Monitor automatically collects and explains the latest relevant regulatory changes across 150 countries. And lastly, Deel’s Worker Classifier combines AI and award-winning research to help classify workers with over 90% accuracy.

Why Superfiliate chose Deel PEO over Rippling for US expansion

Superfiliate, a word-of-mouth marketing platform, empowers brands to grow through referrals, ambassadors, influencers, and affiliates.

As it matured, Superfiliate needed compliance and payroll support for its growing US workforce. Consolidating their operations with Deel was an easy decision for Superfiliate. Their international workers already loved Deel, and bringing their US employees onto Deel PEO was seamless.

"A lot of providers offer PEO, but none of them can beat Deel’s convenience, price, and onboarding support.” — Andy Cloyd, CEO and Co-founder, Superfiliate

Everything you need for a growing workforce

As your forever people platform, Deel scales with your team by providing a full suite of services to help you hire, pay, and manage an evolving workforce.

In addition to Deel PEO, you can use:

  • Deel US Payroll to run payroll across the country
  • Deel Employer of Record (EOR) to hire employees globally without setting up entities
  • Deel Global Payroll to pay direct employees under owned entities, everywhere
  • Deel Contractor to compliantly manage independent contractors worldwide
  • Deel's built in HRIS features to unify reporting and automate HR admin for your entire workforce, all in one free HRIS
  • And more—including background checks, immigration support, equity, and equipment provisioning

Learn more about Deel PEO or book a 30-minute demo to explore the platform, speak with a specialist, and get all your questions answered.

FAQs

HR (Human Resources) is a department within an organization typically responsible for payroll, workforce management, taxes, benefits administration, and other back-office tasks.

A PEO (professional employer organization) is a third-party company that provides outsourced HR services through a co-employment arrangement, sharing certain employer responsibilities and liabilities with the client company. This allows businesses to delegate HR, compliance, and payroll tasks to experts while retaining control over general operations and employee management.

In a PEO arrangement, the client company retains ownership and control over its operations, including the day-to-day management of employees. The PEO assumes responsibility for various human resources-related tasks, but the client company maintains control over employee management and business operations.

No, a PEO is not the same as a staffing agency. A PEO enters into a co-employment relationship to provide HR services, sharing certain employer responsibilities with the client company. In contrast, a staffing agency provides businesses with temporary workers, and once the temporary assignment is complete, the employee returns to the staffing agency.

A PEO provides domestic HR services through a co-employment relationship, where the client company has a local entity and shares certain employer responsibilities with the PEO.

An employer of record (EOR), on the other hand, serves as the legal employer for employees, allowing companies to hire internationally without establishing a local entity. The EOR assumes full legal responsibility for employment, including compliance with local labor laws and regulations.

Learn more about the differences between PEO and EOR services.

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About the author

Shannon Ongaro is a content marketing manager and trained journalist with over a decade of experience producing content that supports franchisees, small businesses, and global enterprises. Over the years, she’s covered topics such as payroll, HR tech, workplace culture, and more. At Deel, Shannon specializes in thought leadership and global payroll content.

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