D worked as a waitress in a Philadelphia restaurant this summer. It dawned on me about a month ago that she never got the W2. To be fair, they could have mailed it to her Philadelphia apartment and it didn’t get forwarded, but she still needs it.
She has contacted them multiple times and has had no luck getting the thing. I want her to file so she gets a refund. What should she do? Call the IRS?
Contact the IRS. If you exhaust your options with your employer and you have not received your W-2, call the IRS at 800-829-1040. You’ll need the following when you call:
Your name, address, Social Security number and phone number;
Your employer’s name, address and phone number;
The dates you worked for the employer; and
An estimate of the amount of wages you were paid and federal income tax withheld in 2013. If possible, you can use your final pay stub to figure these amounts.
Is it that they don’t have it or they don’t respond? Has she phoned or just email? I know we have copies of everyone’s w2, so if someone needed one it would be fairly easy to make a copy.
^They told her they would send it but they never did. She has phoned several times. I will see if she has emailed.
Does she have the paycheck stub for the last paycheck she received from them? It may have enough info on it to do the return and to create a substitute W2, with IRS permission.
My daughter, for the second year in a row, has a W2 with the wrong SSN. The employer didn’t send it until March after we asked 3-4 times, and when it came it had the wrong SSN. He now claims it is her fault that she didn’t notice on the paychecks last summer.
He is such a jerk. Wouldn’t pay her for jury duty either.
I’ll see if she has her last paycheck stub. I would be surprised…
If you are using Turbotax or a similar tax prep software service, if the employer has more than a handful of employees, and if you have the employer’s legal name and EIN, there’s a decent chance the tax prep software will be able to download the W-2 from an IRS database.
If the payroll was done through a payroll service (e.g. ADP), there may be an on line way to look at pay stubs and W-2 forms.
She can request a Wage and Income Transcript from the IRS online. It should be available, since they had to file it with the IRS by now. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/tax-return-transcript-types-and-ways-to-order-them
@kelsmom, thanks! That may be the best thing to do, to avoid stressing out D (she has anxiety, so I tend to helicopter more than I should).
Phone is good. Too many people email and things don’t get taken care of. While I would normally hesitate to have them email a copy/picture, that might be best to ensure she get’s it shortly after their conversation. Fax would be better if feasible. Mail sucks. Luckily you don’t really need to file a paper copy these days. So she just needs the numbers. Good luck.
Update: Ugh, what an ordeal. I looked at the IRS site, but for some reason that I can’t recall it wasn’t working to get her info there.
D kept calling and emailing. Finally, just a few days ago, the bookkkeeper emailed her a scan of the W2 with a snarky note, “Please note that we sent this to the address we had on file for you.” No duh! D had emailed very politely two months ago, explaining that it hadn’t been forwarded to her permanent address and that’s why she needed another copy. She was thinking about responding, but I told her to take the high road.
We filled out her tax return on Turbo Tax and she’s going to get a refund of $188. So the effort was worth it.
There was no need for snark but glad it got resolved.and your D will get her refund.
The employer did what it was required to do, which is mail it to her address on file. They could have been nice and sent the copy earlier, but have no obligation to do so. Good she took the high road as this was not on the employer.
My D’s employer didn’t mail them at all because ‘so many are college kids who don’t give me the right address.’ Well, that’s not the law, and it is not even true. Almost all the kids working for him are from the area and live at home for the summer; many of them went to grade school with my D so the address on file is their parents’ house. She asked him in February and he didn’t send it, and then she asked again and he was out of the country. She finally received it March 15, with the wrong SSN on it. We then had to beg for a correction, which came by email and it wasn’t the right way to do a correction, he just issued a new W2. Somewhere out there is a w2 with the wrong SSN and income associated with it. I think I filed on April 4 and she got her refund checks yesterday.