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Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

I am filing my Utah state tax return and the automatic check tells me I have to review some info from my W-2's. The error states: "Form TC-40W (1): Payer ID must be 14 characters long without hyphens, you must go back to federal W-2 or 1099 to update the employer/payer state withholding ID" I have entered all of the Employer State ID's exactly as they are written on my W-2's. I have double checked the numbers that were provided to me and they each have 14 characters (I have multiple w-2's). I have also tried re-entering all of my w-2's 100% manually and still nothing will allow me to continue. 

 

Can someone please help me figure out why turbotax thinks I have the incorrect information when I am 100% sure I have the correct info?

 

To be honest this has given me enough of a headache already and I would love to just give up on filing state through turbotax but with the federal free file transaction, turbotax will not allow me to stop doing state taxes through them. It makes me file both at the same time. 

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12 Replies
KatrinaLO
Intuit Alumni

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

Please see below for more information about this error:

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/state-taxes/discussion/form-tc-40w-1-payer-id-error-in-utah/00/108...

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Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

@Williamyum 

 

....one person has indicated that it works if you use lower case "wth" letters at the end.

 

have no idea if this is a general thing, or just a random thing.......Please post back if that works for you

____________*Answers are correct to the best of my knowledge when posted, but should not be considered to be legal or official tax advice.*

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

@KatrinaLO 

 

I have tried everything on the thread you sent me (I actually had found that thread previously) and nothing is working.  When it has me review the information there is no box that I can type in. It just shows the full form with a note next to the box I need to change.  The note is as follows: "H 14 characters, no hyphens". The error specifically states I have to go back to my federal return info to change it but nothing happens when I do.

 

Let me know if there is anything else you can think of that might fix the issue. 

 

Thanks,
Will

 

 

 

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

@SteamTrain 

 

Hi thank you for your input. I have tried entering all of my w-2's with lowercase letters but nothing has changed. 

 

Thank you for trying to help though. 

 

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

Hello all, 

 

I just solved this myself. I went through all of my w-2's again and one of them was missing a number.  I fixed that but was still getting the error. This error shows all of your w-2's AND 1099's and I didn't think to check the unemployment form I received, which is a 1099. I must have typed the State Identification number wrong on that form because as soon as I re-entered it, smart check didn't find any errors. 

 

So turns out it was user error on my part. 

 

Thanks again to those that tried to help! 

 

-Will

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

This exact thing just happened to me. Thank you so much for figuring it out. I was able to go back and find my own mistake (it was 1 "-" that had been left in the number on my W2.

Grrr.... hours of frustration and headaches. 

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

This W2 inaccuracy can also happen due to the control number on your W2 being invalid. Therefore, if you are to run into this and it is not "user error", please make sure the information has in fact been uploaded completely and accurately. If not, delete it out and manually re-enter the information.

 

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

This isn't working for me. Changing it to "wth" on all forms just gives the same error (after stepping through 2 dozen web pages again). I remember something like this worked in past years, now I'm in a loop where I can't e-file state and I can't use File by Mail to get past state and just e-file Federal. TurboTax gets more in-the-way every year. What other online tax service should I try? Any recommendations since TurboTax has done nothing to fix this nonsensical error and is now blocking my ability to file my taxes with all the info I painstakingly gave them? They should be paying me to do this!

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

@incoda 

 

Yeah...why TTX has failed to institute a software fix to allow either upper or lower case is frustrating, and just plain incomprehensible,

 

1) what you might try is to completely delete the state withholding line on your W-2 forms (boxes 15,16,17) to make them all blank....works your way out of the form, then re-edit it to enter that data, being careful to use lower case wth the second time around.    ................On one forms I had edited in the past, a simple change like that didn't really change the underlying form, and I had to completely erase, then re-enter.

 

2)  Make sure you do that for EVERY form that you entered that had a UT withholding ID number on it.

____________*Answers are correct to the best of my knowledge when posted, but should not be considered to be legal or official tax advice.*

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

> why TTX has failed to institute a software fix to allow either upper or lower case is frustrating

 

I don't know how that's relevant considering uppercase is correct according to Utah, and people have fixed theirs by changing their uppercase "WTH" to lowercase "wth", so TTX does allow lowercase... but having to type in lowercase shouldn't be required because that doesn't match the state's specifications! The error appears to be a TurboTax bug... that isn't getting fixed after it being reported for years.

 

The federal filing was sent... I paid TurboTax to handle the State one, but I couldn't e-file because of the bug error, so I don't know how to correct anything now without submitting an amendment, which seems absurd considering the numbers are showing 100% correct.

 

> I had to completely erase, then re-enter

 

This makes no sense; if the number is the same when you enter it (or it's pre-populated) the first time, but then won't work until you blank it out and enter the exact same number, that's a bug in TurboTax's software. That's 100% not a human error issue. Maybe Intuit will actually try to fix this bug someday, or at least correct their error message?!

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

I ran into the same problem. My W-2s were correct, but I discovered a 1099R that had the state abbreviation then a "-", so I removed those, and that fixed the error. So if your W-2s are correct, double check any 1099s to make sure there are only 14 characters in the box.  You're welcome.

Utah State Return says my employer ID is not 14 digits when what I have entered is precisely 14 digits.

I checked what I could, everything looked correct... it's possible that TurboTax imported something from a previous year that choked, or the company I did sidework for had something off, I couldn't tell.

 

If it happens again next year, and I still see nothing wrong with the form values, I won't be using TurboTax.

 

At bare minimum, TurboTax needs to actually show the problem, not just the error with the correct-looking value and nothing on the page to click directly to change it (it should at least link to the form with the problem so I can edit the value, rather than me having to hunt down in a forest of links trying to find it). This is 100% a UI/UX problem on TurboTax's end, whether the error or value is correct or not.

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