Wrong SS# on W-2

[RLymanC]

How do you hadle this????

[veritas]

Have your client

contact his employer for a corrected W2. We must get a half a dozen corrections a day for our payroll clients.

[Black Bart]

I'm with Veritas.

I just give it back to the taxpayer and tell him/her they need to get it fixed. They'll usually try and get it done when a refund's at stake. Sometimes they can't and I've filed the tax return with the incorrect W-2 while using the correct number on the 1040 and it goes through okay.

Sometimes when neither I nor the taxpayer knew a SSN was wrong, I filed paper returns with the wrong number on the 1040 and they still went through without a hitch. Two guys furnished me wrong SSNs for their wives and we filed with them for six or seven years, heard nothing, and refunds came through okay. But one year I switched them to EF and both were rejected for having the wrong number. There's something about the system that will kick it out when it's done electronically. Somebody here once explained that -- I forgot what he said about it but he was right.

If it's before Feb. 28th (lots of employers don't mail them in until then) there's a good chance of getting a new correct W-2. I have never been very successful at getting a W-2C from anybody -- clerks who know how/are willing to make one are rare. It's not unusual for a taxpayer to bring one back from small businesses with the old number "whited-out" and the new one typed in. Or a new one with "CORRECTED" typed in at the top while I'm pretty sure the one that went to SSA never gets corrected (but that's a problem for a later day -- or more likely never).