How to Fill Out Form W-2, Box by Box (2026)

Every number on a W-2 already exists somewhere in your payroll records. The form is a summary, not a calculation, and the trouble employers get into comes from putting a year-to-date total in the wrong box or forgetting that two boxes with nearly the same name follow different rules. This guide takes the 2026 Form W-2 one box at a time, in the order they appear, and says where each figure comes from. If you issued a pay stub every period with running YTD totals, the December stub has most of it.

Before the numbered boxes

Boxes a through f identify the parties. Box a is the employee's Social Security number, all nine digits on Copy A, though the IRS permits truncation (XXX-XX-1234) on the copies the employee receives. Box b is your employer identification number, box c your name and address as they appear on Form 941, boxes e and f the employee's name and address. Use the name on the employee's Social Security card; a maiden name or a nickname causes an SSA name/SSN mismatch, and those come back to you as letters.

Box d, the control number, is optional. Payroll systems use it to index forms; a five-person business can leave it blank.

Box 1: wages, tips, other compensation

Box 1 is federal taxable wages: everything subject to federal income tax withholding, whether or not tax was actually withheld. Start with YTD gross, add taxable fringe benefits (personal use of a company car, group-term life over $50,000, taxable moving expenses), add reported tips, then subtract pre-tax deductions that are exempt from income tax: traditional 401(k) and 403(b) deferrals, Section 125 cafeteria-plan premiums, health FSA and dependent-care FSA contributions, HSA contributions through payroll, and pre-tax commuter benefits. Roth deferrals do not reduce box 1.

This is the box the employee copies onto line 1a of Form 1040, so it is the one they notice first when it does not match their idea of "what I made."

Box 2: federal income tax withheld

The YTD total of federal income tax withheld across every paycheck in the calendar year. Nothing is added or subtracted. If you withheld on a bonus at the 22% supplemental rate, that is in here too.

Boxes 3 and 4: Social Security wages and tax

Box 3 is wages subject to Social Security tax, and this is where it parts ways with box 1. Pre-tax retirement deferrals reduce box 1 but not box 3; cafeteria-plan premiums and HSA contributions reduce both. Box 3 does not include tips (those go in box 7) and is capped at the wage base: $176,100 for 2025 and $184,500 for 2026. Once an employee's Social Security wages plus tips hit the cap, box 3 plus box 7 should equal the cap exactly.

Box 4 is the employee's share of Social Security tax, 6.2% of boxes 3 and 7 combined, so it maxes out at $11,439.00 for 2026. If your box 4 is more than a few cents off 6.2% of (box 3 + box 7), one of the three boxes is wrong. The W-2 generator computes box 4 from the wage boxes for exactly this reason.

Boxes 5 and 6: Medicare wages and tax

Box 5 is the same wage definition as box 3, tips included, with no cap. For most employees box 5 equals box 3 plus box 7. Box 6 is 1.45% of box 5 plus the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on box 5 wages above $200,000, withheld regardless of the employee's filing status. An employee at $250,000 in box 5 has $3,625.00 plus $450.00, or $4,075.00, in box 6.

Boxes 7 and 8: tips

Box 7 is Social Security tips: the tips the employee reported to you under IRC section 6053(a), the ones you withheld on. Box 8 is allocated tips, which only large food and beverage establishments filing Form 8027 use, and which are not included in boxes 1, 3, 5 or 7. If you are not running a restaurant with tip allocation, box 8 stays blank.

Box 9

Blank. It was the verification code pilot and has been retired.

Box 10: dependent care benefits

The total dependent-care assistance you provided or the employee set aside through a dependent-care FSA, including amounts over the exclusion limit. The portion above the limit is also included in boxes 1, 3 and 5.

Box 11: nonqualified plans

Distributions from a nonqualified deferred compensation plan or a nongovernmental 457(b) plan, so the SSA can tell whether box 1 wages were earned this year or in a prior year. Most small employers leave it blank.

Box 12: the coded amounts

Box 12 holds up to four code-and-amount pairs on a single form (12a through 12d); use a second W-2 for more. The full 2026 list runs to 33 codes; the ones a small employer meets most often:

• D traditional 401(k) deferrals, E 403(b), AA Roth 401(k), BB Roth 403(b)
• C taxable cost of group-term life insurance over $50,000
• W employer and payroll HSA contributions
• DD total cost of employer-sponsored health coverage (informational, and optional for employers that filed fewer than 250 W-2s the prior year)
• T adoption benefits, P excludable moving expense reimbursements for Armed Forces members on active duty and, from 2026, members of the intelligence community

Three codes are new for tax year 2026, added for the tips and overtime deductions and the Trump account program:

• TP total cash tips reported to the employer. This is what lets the employee claim the qualified tips deduction, up to $25,000. If you report TP you must also complete box 14b.
• TT total qualified overtime compensation, meaning the premium portion of FLSA overtime (the half in time-and-a-half), which the employee deducts up to $12,500 ($25,000 married filing jointly). Regular straight-time pay for the overtime hours is not qualified overtime.
• TA employer contributions under a section 128 Trump account contribution program, effective for contributions from July 4, 2026, capped at $2,500 per employee per year.

The 2026 form still carries the older codes; TA, TP and TT simply do not exist on a 2025 W-2, so a 2025 form with those codes will be rejected.

Box 13: the three checkboxes

Statutory employee (a specific set of workers, mainly certain drivers, life insurance agents, home workers and traveling salespeople, whose wages are subject to FICA but not income tax withholding), retirement plan (check it if the employee was an active participant in your 401(k), SEP, SIMPLE or pension plan at any point in the year, whether or not they contributed) and third-party sick pay. The retirement-plan box matters more than it looks: it is what limits the employee's IRA deduction.

Boxes 14a and 14b

Box 14 was split for 2026. Box 14a, "Other," is the free-text area where employers report things the employee's tax preparer needs but no numbered box covers: state disability insurance withheld (CA SDI, NJ SDI, NY SDI), union dues, uniform payments, after-tax pension contributions, and state paid family leave premiums. Label each item.

Box 14b is new: the Treasury Tipped Occupation Code. When box 12 reports cash tips under code TP, enter the three-digit code from Treasury's list for the employee's occupation, or 000 if the occupation is not on the list. Treasury's list is what decides whether the tips qualify for the deduction, which is why the code has to travel with the amount.

Boxes 15 through 20: state and local

Box 15 is the two-letter state code and your state employer ID number, box 16 state wages, box 17 state income tax withheld, box 18 local wages, box 19 local tax, box 20 the locality name. Two states fit on one form; use a second W-2 for a third. State wages often differ from box 1 because states do not all follow federal treatment of pre-tax deductions (Pennsylvania taxes 401(k) deferrals, for example), so pull box 16 from your state-wage YTD, not by copying box 1. The multi-state guide covers employees who worked in more than one state.

Which copy goes where

The employee gets Copy B (to attach to the federal return), Copy C (to keep) and Copy 2 (for the state or local return). Copy A goes to the Social Security Administration with a Form W-3 transmittal; Copy 1 goes to the state, city or local tax department if it requires one; Copy D is yours to keep for four years.

First-time filers often miss two rules about Copy A. It is machine-scanned, so a plain-paper printout of the PDF is not acceptable; it has to be the official red-ink form or a substitute approved under Publication 1141. And electronic filing is mandatory once you file 10 or more information returns of any type in the year, W-2s and 1099s counted together. Business Services Online at ssa.gov takes W-2s for free, either typed in one at a time (up to 50 per submission) or uploaded, and it generates the W-3 for you. For most small employers it is easier than the paper route even below the threshold.

The employee copies are a different matter. Publication 1141 allows substitute Copies B, C and 2 on plain paper, in black ink, as long as they carry the same boxes and the Notice to Employee and box instructions the official form prints on the back. That is what the W-2 generator produces: enter the figures, check the computed boxes 4 and 6 against your payroll totals in the free preview, and download Copies B, C and 2 as one PDF. The clean copy is $4.99; subscribers have it included. Copy A still goes to the SSA through BSO.

Deadline and penalties

For tax year 2026, employee copies and Copy A are both due by January 31, 2027, which is a Sunday, so the effective date is Monday, February 1, 2027. There is no automatic extension for W-2s; Form 8809 grants 30 extra days only for specific hardships.

Late or incorrect forms are penalized per form under IRC sections 6721 and 6722, one penalty for the SSA copy and a separate one for the employee copy. For forms due in 2027 the amounts are $60 per form if corrected within 30 days, $130 if corrected by August 1, and $340 after that, with intentional disregard at $690 or 10% of the amount that should have been reported, whichever is greater. Annual caps for a business with $5 million or less in gross receipts run from $244,500 to $1,397,000. A wrong SSN counts as an incorrect return.

Fixing a W-2 after it is issued

If you catch an error after the employee has the form but before you have sent Copy A, issue a corrected W-2 with "CORRECTED" marked on the employee copies and file the corrected version with the SSA. If Copy A has already been filed, use Form W-2c and a W-3c. Employees reading this from the other side, trying to work out whether the mismatch is an error at all, should start with the stub-to-W-2 reconciliation guide; most box 1 versus box 3 differences are the pre-tax deduction rule, not a mistake.