State Agencies Bulletin No. 1541

Subject
Form W-2 (Wage and Tax Statement) for Calendar Year 2016
Date Issued
January 6, 2017

Purpose

To inform agencies of the content information for the 2016 Form W-2.

Background

According to IRS Publication 15, Circular for 2016, and the Instructions for Form W-2 (Wage and Tax Statement), employers are required to furnish each employee with a Form W-2 by January 31, 2017.

2016 Form W-2 Content

2016 Form W-2s will include earnings paid in paychecks dated:

Administration: 01/13/16 through 12/28/16
Institution: 01/07/16 through 12/22/16

Employees who worked for more than one agency in the same company during the year, for example State of New York (NYS) or City University of New York (CUNY), will receive only one (1) Form W-2.

Employees who worked for more than one agency in multiple companies, for example both NYS and CUNY, will receive a Form W-2 for each company.

Attachment A provides a detailed breakdown of the information that will appear in each box of the Form W-2 Statement.

Additional Employee Information

Employees should retain their last paycheck/direct deposit advice statement for 2016 for a record of amounts paid in 2016 for the following that are excluded from Boxes 1, 3, and 5 and do not appear on Form W-2.

  • Non-taxable Health Insurance
  • NYS-Ride Transportation Benefit Program
  • CUNY Pre-tax and After-tax Transit Benefit
  • CUNY Transit Benefit Transportation Spending Account Program

For CUNY employees only, deductions for Dependent Care, Health Care Flex Spending Account and Non-taxable Health Insurance are reported in Box 14 as IRC125.

Taxable Gross Calculations

Attachment B (Taxable Gross Calculations). Shows the components of the Federal, Social Security and Medicare Taxable Gross.

W-2 Distribution

The agency address will be used as the return address for the 2016 Form W-2 Statements.

OSC will mail Form W-2 to employees’ mailing address currently listed in PayServ. If no mailing address exists, the form will be mailed to the employee’s home address.

Note: IMPORTANT TAX DOCUMENT ENCLOSED will appear on the outside of the Form W-2 Statement.

Questions

Questions regarding this bulletin may be emailed to the Tax and Compliance mailbox.