Need Help Getting 2017 W2 from Employer That Shut Down

This is super helpful, but I'm wondering about penalties. If OP files a late 2017 return and ends up owing taxes, will they face huge penalties and interest after 6 years? Also, how accurate does the estimation need to be on Form 4852 if they have zero records from that job?

Yes, there can be penalties and interest if taxes were owed. The failure-to-file penalty is usually 5% of unpaid taxes for each month your return is late, up to 25% maximum. There's also a failure-to-pay penalty of 0.5% per month, plus interest. After 6 years, these can add up significantly, but the IRS sometimes offers penalty abatement for first-time filers with reasonable cause. For Form 4852 accuracy, you should make good-faith estimates based on whatever information you have. Even partial information helps - like remembering your approximate salary, pay rate, or hours worked. If you have bank deposits showing your net pay, you can work backward to estimate gross pay and withholdings. The IRS understands when you're making reasonable estimates due to circumstances beyond your control.

How exactly does that work? Can they really recreate your W2 just from bank statements? What if you had multiple jobs that year or irregular deposits? Did you have to provide them with a lot of documentation?

I'm a little skeptical about this. Did you have to pay for the service? I've heard the IRS wage transcript should have everything you need for free. What additional info did you get from taxr.ai that wasn't on the IRS transcript?

The process is pretty straightforward. You upload your bank statements and any pay stubs you might still have, and their system identifies likely paycheck deposits by looking for regular payment patterns. For multiple jobs, you can label which deposits came from which employer, and they separate them out. If your deposits were irregular, you can manually indicate which ones were employment income. I didn't have to pay anything upfront to see if they could help with my situation. What made them valuable for me was that the IRS transcript only showed the raw numbers, but didn't help with figuring out which deductions I qualified for or how to complete the substitute W2 form properly. They helped me understand what each box on the W2 should contain based on the information available and provided documentation that satisfied the IRS requirements for a substitute form.

Wait, so this service calls the IRS for you? How does that even work? Does the IRS allow third parties to wait in the queue like that? Seems like it might be against their rules or something.

This sounds like a scam. Why would anyone pay for something like this when you can just call the IRS yourself? I've gotten through to them before by calling right when they open. Plus, I wouldn't want to give my personal tax info to some random service.

It doesn't call the IRS for you - it just holds your place in line. The system calls you when an IRS agent picks up, and then you're the one talking directly to the IRS. There's no third party involved in your actual conversation with the IRS agent. It's basically just a notification system that lets you know when your call has been answered instead of you having to stay on hold for hours. The service doesn't need any of your personal tax info - you don't share any tax details with them. They just need your phone number to call you back when an agent answers. I was skeptical too until I tried it, but it's just a time-saving tool, not someone intervening in your tax matters.

Thanks for mentioning this! Do you know if setting up a payment plan affects your credit score? And is there a minimum amount I have to pay monthly or can I set it to whatever I can afford?

Setting up an IRS payment plan generally doesn't directly affect your credit score - the IRS doesn't report to credit bureaus like a normal lender would. However, if you fail to pay and the IRS files a tax lien, that WILL hurt your credit. So the payment plan actually helps protect your credit by preventing more serious collection actions. For monthly payment amounts, it depends on how much you owe. For debts under $10,000, you can pretty much set your own monthly payment as long as you can pay off the full amount within 3 years. For larger amounts, the IRS may want financial information to determine what you can afford. They're surprisingly reasonable about this - they'd rather get paid slowly than not at all.

This is actually brilliant advice. I had a similar situation (though not as old) and the Social Security earnings record was spot on. Combined with the IRS transcript it gave me everything I needed!