Did Your Employer Not Give You a W2 for 2022?

The law requires employers to give their employees a Form W-2 by January 31^st each year. That means if you worked for an employer in 2022, you should have received your W-2 by now. If you haven’t yet received your W-2, you should make contact with that employer and ask them for the W-2. 

The W-2 shows the total wages that the employer paid to the employee the year before, and the total amount of all the different taxes (federal, state, local) that the employer withheld from those wages. That means that this year employers are issuing W-2 forms to show the wages and withholding from 2022. This information is used to complete your 2022 tax return.

The employer also sends a copy of the W-2 to Social Security so that the employee gets Social Security credit for the wages earned the prior year. If you haven’t yet received your W-2, it might mean that your employer also didn’t send a copy to Social Security, which can cost you valuable credit for future retirement and disability benefits! 

If you haven’t yet received a W-2, it might also mean that your employer “misclassified” you as an Independent Contractor. This can cost you extra tax and also risk your future Social Security benefits. If your employer wasn’t taking taxes out of your pay last year and you think you might have been misclassified, check out our website https://philalegal.org/resources/worker-misclassification and contact us if you have questions.

Sometimes people just don’t get their W-2 because they have moved and haven’t updated their address, or because it was otherwise lost in the mail. Sometimes people don’t realize that the W-2 wasn’t mailed but was delivered through an online account with the company.

If you try to contact your employer to get a copy of your W-2, and the employer doesn’t give it to you by February 15^th, you can call the IRS at 800-829-1040 and the IRS should send a letter your employer instructing them that they have to send you your W-2 within 10 days of getting that letter. You will have to provide your name, address, phone number, social security number, and dates of employment. You will also have to provide your employer’s name, address, and phone number. If you call 800-829-1040 after February 15^th and the IRS doesn’t tell you that they will send a letter to your employer, tell them you read that they are supposed to send that letter according to Internal Revenue Manual 21.3.6.4.7.1(4) Box 2.

If you try to contact your employer to get a copy of your W-2, but your employer doesn’t give it to you by the end of February, you can file your taxes by using your last pay stub from 2022 and filing out Form 4852 as a “substitute W-2”. You’ll also want to gather any other proof of the wages you have, such as bank deposits, copies of checks, additional paystubs, which you can submit with the Form 4852 or wait to see if the IRS asks for them.   

If your employer misclassified you and wasn’t taking taxes out of your pay last year, there is a different process than the Form 4852 “substitute for return”, which is a bit more complicated.

Bottom line: if you haven’t received your W-2 and can’t get your employer to give it to you, contact us to see if we can help! Call our intake at 215-981-3800 between 9:30 am and 12 pm Monday through Thursday or apply online at https://philalegal.org/apply.