If you are a Gusto payroll client, and you have employees who need their annual W-2 payroll tax forms, then the easiest way to handle it is to make sure you have entered all of their email addresses into the Gusto system under each employee’s profile. The employee will receive an automated email from Gusto asking them to create an online account. Once they have done this, they will receive notifications each time a W-2 form or paystub is available for secure download.
If for some reason your employee does not consent to online delivery, or if they do not have an email address, you can print the W-2 and give or mail it to them.
Gusto files the required federal, state and local copies of W-2 forms to the appropriate tax agencies, so you don’t need to order special paper stock in order to print and mail copies of W-2s — you can just print them on regular paper for those employees who may need it.
Gusto provides specific instructions for each of these options here.
To recap, there are three methods to issuing your employees their W-2 forms —
Method 1: Enable your employees online access to their Gusto accounts so that they can obtain their W-2 forms electronically.
Method 2: Download individual W-2s, and distribute them to specific employees.
Method 3: Print the entire W-2 PDF bundle, and distribute them to all employees.
As you probably know if you are a regular reader of my blog, I am a big fan of Gusto. They have made many improvements over the past few years, and at this point they really blow away the competition, especially with their QuickBooks Online integration. (I am not being paid to say any of this — I am simply a big fan, having spent way too many years dealing with payroll company frustrations.)
And if you are a client of mine, but aren’t using Gusto payroll yet and would like to — just let me know, or sign up here! You will receive a 15% discount, since I do not accept revenue shares.
For those of you who are not clients of mine, but are interested in using Gusto for payroll, sign up here!
And for colleagues who are interested in offering Gusto as an option to your own bookkeeping and accounting clients, let me know and I’ll introduce you to my rep, Annie Arthur — who is seriously the best.
I’m a gusto employee and I gave NOT received my W-2 for 2020 after exhausting all measures to locate it. It is nowhere in my account under documents or any other place.
Please advise me on what to do. I’ve also contacted my previous employer but to no avail. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.
Hi there — although this is not the topic of this blog post at all, I’ll try to help.
When you say you are a Gusto employee, I think you mean that you worked for a company that used Gusto to pay its employees. If so, then you were at some point prompted to create an employee account, which is where you would log in to download your W-2. Here are instructions for doing that:
https://support.gusto.com/state-registration-compliance/tax-forms/form-W-2/1066221411/Access-W-2-forms.htm
If for some reason you do not have access to the portal anymore, you can contact your former employer — they are able to log in and download a pdf copy of it for you, and this is ultimately their responsibility, not Gusto’s.
I have never seen a situation where an employee was paid through Gusto but a W-2 was not generated, so if that truly is the case, it makes me wonder if you switched to 1099-independent-contractor status at some point in the year. In that case, you would log into your contractor account in Gusto, or contact your employer directly for a 1099-NEC form.
If for whatever reason all else fails, you could try contacting Gusto support — but this is really the responsibility of your former employer, and not Gusto. Gusto is just a payroll service provider, like ADP, Paychex, or Payroll Processors. But they are also really friendly folks and might be able to point you in the right direction.
https://gusto.com/about/contact
Best of luck to you.
-Nancy