Form IT-644: Workers with Disabilities Tax Credit (Tax Year 2025) Explained

Form IT-644, issued by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, is used to calculate and claim the Workers with Disabilities Tax Credit. This credit rewards employers who hire individuals with disabilities and pay them qualified wages during the tax year. If your business has taken on employees who qualify under New York’s definition of a worker with a disability, this form is how you translate that hiring decision into a real reduction on your state tax bill.

The credit is separate from the federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit, though the two programs share a similar goal: encouraging businesses to hire people who face barriers to employment. New York’s version applies specifically to workers certified as having a disability by the state’s Education Department or another authorized certifying agency, and it requires the employer to have paid at least a minimum number of hours in qualified wages before the credit can be claimed.

Who Needs to File Form IT-644

This form is for employers, not employees. If you run a business in New York State and employed one or more workers with disabilities during 2025, you may be eligible to claim this credit against your corporation franchise tax, personal income tax (if you’re a sole proprietor or partner), or other applicable New York State tax. Partnerships, S corporations, and LLCs typically compute the credit at the entity level and then pass it through to individual partners, shareholders, or members, who each file their own IT-644 to claim their share.

To qualify, the worker generally must have been certified as disabled by a recognized state agency before or shortly after the hiring, and the employer must have maintained the employment relationship for the required period specified in the instructions. The credit amount is based on a percentage of qualified first- and second-year wages, subject to caps outlined by the Department of Taxation and Finance for the applicable tax year.

When the Form Is Used

Form IT-644 is filed along with your annual New York State tax return for the year in which the qualified wages were paid. For most businesses, that means submitting it with your 2025 tax year filing, whether that’s a corporate franchise tax return or a personal income tax return for pass-through entity owners. The form is not something you file on its own — it attaches to your main return as supporting documentation for the credit you’re claiming.

Employers who work with multiple certifying agencies or hire several qualifying employees in the same year will need to aggregate the wage and hour data carefully before completing the form, since the calculation depends on precise wage totals per employee.

How to Get and Complete Form IT-644

The form is available directly from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance website as a fillable PDF, which means you can type your information directly into the form fields before printing or attaching it to an electronic filing. Having the digital fill-in version saves time compared to handwriting entries, and it reduces the risk of illegible numbers that could delay processing.

Before starting, gather documentation showing employee certification dates, hire dates, hours worked, and wages paid. The instructions accompanying the form walk through the specific worksheet calculations needed to arrive at the final credit amount, including how to handle partial-year employment and wage caps.

Employers juggling multiple New York State credits and recapture provisions in the same filing season may also want to review how other related forms interact with their return. For example, businesses that received START-UP NY benefits and need to reverse them should check out our breakdown of Form IT-645 for recapturing START-UP NY tax benefits. And if your business operates as a pass-through entity making elective tax payments, our guide to Form 3893 instructions covers a related filing scenario that often comes up alongside credits like this one.

Once completed, double-check that the totals on Form IT-644 match the credit amount you’re entering on your main tax return, since discrepancies here are a common reason for processing delays or follow-up notices from the state.