What do w2s look like

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Skip To Main Content. What is a W-2 Form? Importance of your tax withholding When your employer withholds amounts from your paycheck for federal income taxes, those amounts are remitted to the IRS throughout the year. Verifying your name and Social Security number The identifying information section of the W-2 is essentially a tracking feature.

Attaching your W-2 When you finish your tax returns and get ready to file them, remember that a copy of your W-2 must always be attached. All you need to know is yourself Just answer simple questions about your life, and TurboTax Free Edition will take care of the rest. If you are missing some or all of your Tax Year income forms W-2, etc. After sign in, select Income Verification and download the transcript. Once you have the income information, prepare and eFile your Tax return by Tax Day, April 18, The "W" in W-2 stands for "withholding".

We don't know what the "2" means, but we'll update this page once we find out! Or, let us know if you happen to know what the "2" might stand for.

While a W-2 is for employers to complete and send to you, you complete and provide a W-4 to your employer to inform them of how much tax you want withheld from your paycheck. Completing your W-4 correctly is in your best interest, thus please visit the extensive eFile. Get Your Tax Refund Date. What is DocuClix? Security About eFile.

Where Is My Refund? How to Check Refund Status efile. Mailing Addresses Contact eFile. Sign In Start Now. W-2 Topic. A W-2 reports employees' annual wages and the amount of taxes withheld from their paychecks.

A W-2 employee is someone whose employer deducts taxes from their paychecks and submits this information to the government. An employer is legally required to send out a W-2 form to every employee to whom they paid a salary, wage, or another form of compensation. This does not include contracted or self-employed workers , who file taxes with different forms. The employer must send the employee the W-2 form on or before Jan. The federal income tax filing due date for individuals has been extended from April 15, , to May 17, Payment of taxes owed can be delayed to the same date without penalty.

Your state tax deadline may not be delayed. If you were affected by the February snowstorm disaster in Texas, your deadline for filing has been moved to June 15, If you don't live in Texas but were affected by the storm, you may still be eligible for the extension. The SSA uses the information on these forms to calculate the Social Security benefits to which each worker is entitled.

Tax documents are filed for the previous year. For example, if you receive a W-2 form in January it reflects your income earned for If you are an employee of a company and will receive a W-2 for your income taxes, it will be sent to you automatically each year by your employer. Your employer will also submit a copy of your W-2 with the IRS. The information provided on Form W-4 or sometimes Form W-9 when you are first hired provides the information your company needs to keep track of payroll, tax withholding, employer-provided benefits, and pre-tax contributions to things like a k retirement plan.

The W-4 form tells the employer the amount of tax to withhold from an employee's paycheck based on the person's marital status, number of allowances and dependents, and other factors. When you prepare your income taxes, you will need to input the data found on your W-2 into a Form individual tax return, either by hand or electronically.

Online tax preparation software now allows you to directly import the information on your W-2 from your payroll provider in many cases. Every W-2 has the same fields, no matter the employer. W-2 forms are divided into state and federal sections since employees must file taxes on both levels. The remaining fields are mostly details of the employee's income from the previous year. The employee's total earnings from the employer for the year are recorded, along with the amount withheld in taxes from the employee's paychecks, separated into the withholding for federal income tax, Social Security tax, and more.

If the employee also works for tips, a field shows how much money in tips the employee earned for the year. If you work multiple jobs that provide W-2s, you need to input each separately. When the employee files taxes, the amount of tax withheld according to the W-2 form is deducted from their gross tax obligation.

If more tax was withheld than the employee owes, a refund will be issued. However, taxpayers are required to report all salary, wage, and tip income even if that income is not reported on a W W-2 forms include both numbered and lettered boxes that an employer must fill out and reflects how much you earned and taxes withheld. The lettered boxes on a W-2 include the name and address of you and your employer, your Social Security number, and your employer's EIN and state ID number. Box 1 shows your taxable income, including wages, salary, tips, and bonuses, while Box 2 shows how much federal income tax your employer withheld from your pay.

Box 3 details how much of your earnings were subject to Social Security tax and Box 4 the amount of Social Security tax that was withheld. And then of course we go into year two, year two, and let's say you are working at ABC Employer for part of this year, so you are working for them, maybe full year, maybe part of the year.

So in the next year, you're going to have to fill out your taxes and filling out your taxes aren't necessarily paying your taxes, you might have been paying your taxes all year, your employer with every pay check would have probably been withholding some of your income for federal income tax, state income tax, social security taxes, Medicare taxes, and then when you fill out your taxes by the April 15th deadline, so this is four 15 deadline, you have to get your taxes done by that date, that's when you true it up, if you were paying too much based on your particular circumstances during the year, then you will get a refund, if you paid too little based on your particular circumstances, then you're going to have to pay, you're gonna have to true it up by that, you're gonna have to true it up by that date.

And to help you account for this and to help you account for how much you got paid and how much of your income was withheld for these different reasons, your employer issues you a W, issues you a W2 form. And it sends one W2 form, one W2 form goes to you, and then one W2 form will go to the IRS, so just so that it knows what happened in that year as well and any employer you worked for in that year one needs to get you that W2 form by January 31, by January 31 of the next year so that you have it there to actually get your taxes done by April 15th and if you have more than one employer, you're going to need to have, you should get one W2 form for each employer.

So now let's just look at what this form is telling us so some of this might be a little self-explanatory. You have your social security number, this is how the IRS keeps track of you.

You have your employer identification number, this is how the IRS keeps track of your employer. And then you have just the general information, the name and address of your employer, your name and address, and then you have all the information about, well, what is your, what were your taxable wages and tips and compensation and then how much taxes were actually withheld, so we see here in box one, wages, tips, and other compensation so this is your taxable wages, tips, and other compensation used to calculate your federal income tax so this is essentially the number that was kind of input to think about how much was withheld and then this was the actual number that was withheld.

Then we go to box number three, social security wages.