Employers are required to provide all employees a Form W-2 (“W2”) by January 31 of the calendar year following the year when the W-2 wages were earned. A W2 is an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax form that employers use to report wages paid to employees as well as the taxes withheld from those wages in an entire calendar year. Some employees use the pay and deductions information in their W2 to fill out their tax returns themselves or provide to their tax preparer. It is not uncommon for employers to forget or fail to provide employees a W2 for one reason or another. Also, a W2 may get lost in the mail.
If employees don’t receive a W2 for the previous calendar year by approximately a week after January 31st, to allow for mailing time, then easiest thing to do is probably to just contact their employer and ask for a copy of the W2. Remember, sometimes a W2 does not make it to the corresponding employee because of an employer’s accidental oversight or someone else’s fault, like the mail carrier.
If asking an employer for a copy of the W2 does not fix the problem, then an employee may want to consider contacting the IRS by searching for the IRS taxpayer assistance phone number on the internet. The IRS is supposed to contact the employer on the employee’s behalf to assist in the obtaining of the W2. The IRS may also impose a monetary penalty against the employer for failing to timely furnish a W-2 regardless of whether the employer complies with the IRS request for the W2.