If your son lives in OH and works in WV, paid both OH and WV state income taxes in a prior year and included the full amount of his wage income on both state income tax returns, he only needs to file an amended return for WV for those prior years. (OH residents will report all income from all sources (including WV wages) so these returns should be correctly filed if they included this WV wage income.)
He does not need to wait for a corrected w-2 since his employer would already have submitted the collected state taxes to the WV Department of Revenue but he would need to contact his employer to rectify this
error.
OH and WV have what is called a state reciprocal agreement. This allows nonresidents to not have state withholding taxes taken out for wages earned in the state.
To claim the exemption from WV withholdings, employees must fill out the Certificate of Nonresidence
in Form WV/IT-104, Employee's Withholding Exemption Certificate. The form must
be retained by the employer. If Form WV/IT-104 is not properly executed by an
employee who is a resident of those states, the employer must continue to
deduct and withhold West Virginia income tax..
In
order to get the full refund of his WV withholdings, he will need to file a
nonresident WV state income tax return but report zero "0" income from WV (even though
he does have WV wage income). He needs to file his WV return this way because
WV does not allow a credit for tax paid to a reciprocal state on wages,
salaries and commissions. If tax was withheld by a reciprocal state (WV), he
must file directly with the state for a refund of those taxes. He must mail in
this return and include his state W-2 information. He will want to include an
explanatory statement with his WV return stating his situation (that his WV
employer withheld WV taxes from his wages in error).
When filing his amended WV tax return for prior year, he will want to file with "0" income from WV and include the explanatory letter as stated about.
