About Unemployment Taxes Unemployment insurance taxes are collected for the purpose of paying benefits to individuals who are unemployed through no fault of their own, while they seek new employment. Generally, a firm is liable for unemployment taxes in Mississippi when the firm has one or more employees on one or more days in each of twenty calendar weeks within a calendar year, or has a payroll of fifteen hundred dollars ($1,500) in any calendar quarter in the a calendar year. The exceptions to this rule are agricultural, domestic, some non-profit and governmental employment. An employer's tax rate is based in part on their actual unemployment costs and in part on unemployment trust fund solvency factors. Tax rates for employers vary from 0.4% to 5.4%. Taxes are paid on the first $7000.00 of wages for each employee each year, and are due on or before the last day of the month immediately after the calendar quarter. In addition to state unemployment taxes, certain federal taxes are generally due. Information on the federal unemployment taxes may be secured from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This web site only applies to State of Mississippi unemployment taxes.