Understanding Your W-2 Form

This Small Article Will Help You in Demystifying Your W-2 Form

Tax time is here again. And all of us would have already received our W-2 forms from each of our employer. This is the most important form for tax filing. It contains all the information required to filed our taxes. Despite this form being so important, sometimes this form is the least understood one.

There are many boxes on W-2 form. However, all of them are not required and they are just informative in nature. Also, W-2 form is not applicable to self-employed persons (unless they are salaried employees too). For self-employed persons, they need to fill different forms. Let's quickly try to discover what different sections of the form mean:

Box A: This is Control Number for your employer. It uniquely identifies each W-2 form that your employer generates.

Box B: This is Employer's Identification Number for tax purposes. Each employer with one or more employees would have an EIN.

Box C: This is Employer's Information. It includes your employer's Name, Address, City, State, Zip.

Box D: This is your Social Security Number. Make sure this number is correct. If this is incorrect, ask your employer to correct this, and issue you a new W-2.

Box E: This is your name.

Box F: This is your address. This includes your Address, city, state and zip code.

Box 1: This is total of your wages, tips and other compensation. This is basically total of all your taxable wages for federal tax calculation purposes.

Box 2: This represents Federal Income Tax withheld. This is the sum of all the amount that was deducted from your salary for Federal Income tax.

Box 3: This represents the total amount of your wages subject to social security taxes.

Box 4: This represents the total amount of Social Security tax withheld from your salary. This is based on amount given in Box 3.

Box 5: This represents the total amount of your wages subject to medicare tax. This amount can sometimes be greater than even the amount given in Box 1, as it includes 401K benefits and other compensation also.

Box 6: This represents the total amount of Medicare tax withheld from your salary. This is based on amount given in Box 5.