Restaurant I worked at (IHOP) closed - how to get W2 for one day of training? Do I even need it?

This is actually a common issue when businesses close. Even for just one day of work, legally they should have paid you and provided a W2. First, try contacting IHOP corporate again but press whatever option gets you to a human rather than following the automated prompts. Explain that the location closed and you need contact information for the franchise owner. They should have records of who owned that franchise. Another option is to request a wage transcript from the IRS. If your employer reported your wages, it will show up there. You can get this online at IRS.gov through their "Get Transcript" service. The transcript will show what income was reported under your SSN. For your second question - yes, technically you should report all income even from one day. However, if the amount is very small and you never received payment, the employer may not have processed any payroll for you. In that case, there might not be a W2 to find.

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Have you tried going to IRS.gov and getting your wage and income transcript? It shows all W2s and 1099s reported under your SSN. Super easy to access if you create an account. It might show if they ever processed payroll for you.

If it was just one day of training and you never got paid, are you sure you were actually added to their payroll system? Sounds like they might have had you fill out paperwork but never processed it before closing. If that's the case, technically no income was paid to you, so there wouldn't be a W2.

If you filled out all the hiring paperwork but never received any payment, there's a good chance you were never actually entered into their payroll system. Many employers don't process new hires into payroll until after their first day or week of work. Since you mentioned you never got paid for that training day, the employer likely never reported any wages to the IRS under your SSN. This means there wouldn't be a W2 to find because no taxable income was actually paid out. However, if you want to be absolutely certain, I'd recommend checking your Social Security earnings record at ssa.gov once the year's data is updated (usually by fall). This will show all wages reported by employers. If nothing shows up for that IHOP location, you can be confident there's no missing W2 to worry about. The bottom line: if no wages were paid, there's no taxable income to report, and you shouldn't stress about a missing W2 that probably doesn't exist.