W-2 State Withholding

[geekgirldany]

Thank you all for posting. Well you know when you tell someone they will be owing a substantial amount, it is amazing how quickly they will call the employer and get the W-2. Frustrating on my end but anyway... did get the W-2.

Yep, Georgia doesn't keep up with it. I had a client forget a 1099R. Amended returns for that year and the state sent back a letter saying he owed. I had attached a copy of the 1099R showing the withholding on the amended return. After speaking to two different people, one of which who said it wasn't on his tax account, I finally got the other one to clear it when the 1099R was presented yet again.

So it seems like you could make up a number for the state withholding and it would be accepted no questions, until years later. Georgia is so bad about waiting years to try and collect on past due taxes on individual tax returns.

[Gary2]

In fairness to the states: There is a difference between having the information available to a batch program that does cross-matching and having it available on an agent's desktop where it can be queried or printed. And there's a difference between having it available for query by the employer's EIN versus having it available for query by the employee's SSN.

I once had to request a fairly recent MA tax return. They couldn't do a computer transcript, and it took several weeks to get the photocopies of the original (pencil and paper). Fortunately, there was no charge (unlike the IRS).

However, MA does seem to be able to manage a running account for taxpayers. So when faced with the missing W-2 situation, I'll assume whatever the current standard rate is (typically 5%, MA being a flat-tax state), and let the state worry about any discrepancies. They're pretty good if the result is an overpayment.