Tax Year Prior to 2020: Wont accept box d control number from w2 i am entering it exactly as it appears

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 3, 2019
1 reply
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TurboTax is attempting to import my W-2 info using box D, but the web site's input mask is rejecting what I've typed in, which is exactly what's in box D. It looks like the employer payroll department has a control number that's not what TurboTax is expecting, but it's what's on the W-2. If the contents of box D don't matter to the IRS, why is TurboTax limiting what I can type in? I can't do auto-import because of this TurboTax limitation.

TurboTax Deluxe Online

cGAnswers

Level 5

Thanks for using TurboTax

A Control Number (Box D) is used by many payroll departments to uniquely identify a W-2 in their system. If your W-2 doesn't have one, it's no big deal – you can simply leave it blank.

If you get errors when attempting to e-file with an empty Box D, just enter any number in this
format: 5 digits, space, 5 digits (for example, 12345 67890).

The IRS doesn't care what's in Box D because its use by payroll departments is optional.

Now, if you're trying to import your W-2 and you're persistently being asked to enter something in Box D, click skip import to get past this screen and manually enter your W-2 (which should only take a few minutes anyway).

Recommended Answer Thread: https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/2655867-box-d-matches-what-s-the-problem?jump_to=answer_4421994

Hope this helps

jeff15Author

Level 2

The problem is the employer had a value in box d but it did not match the required TurboTax input format and TurboTax would not let me enter it. I was trying to automatically import the W2 but TurboTax would not allow me to enter the value that was shown. If the import had failed, that would have been okay, but the Turbo Tax software never even let me get to that point to try it. If as TurboTax reports the IRS does not care what is in that field why doesn't TurboTax let me enter any value instead of requiring a certain format?