What does Form TC-40w: 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 mean

[KrisD15]

The TurboTax program is having difficulty reading a State ID Number. 

Please go back to your income reporting form, be that a W2 or 1099. 

In Box 15, there might be a state abbreviation, such as IL for Illinois, and then the State ID Number for the company that issued the w2 or 1099. 

Please check the number after the state abbreviation and remove any hyphens (-). Make sure there is a space between the number and the state abbreviation.  

The program needs to account for any state tax you paid, and who paid it on your behalf so that you can get credit for those payments. 

[mesquitebean]

@ l-roark2364 

If you are getting an error concerning the 14-character Utah withholding number on a TC-40W, the following is the solution that has worked for many Utah users.

First of all, the 14-character number should be entered with no hyphens/dashes.

Secondly, it ends with wth (included in the 14-characters), but many Utah filers have reported that changing the "wth" to lower case wth has allowed them to proceed to efile.

So when you enter the 14 characters, try lower case for the wth.  You will likely need to do this for all the forms you have that have a Utah 14-character withholding number, such as a W-2 and any 1099 forms that also have such a Utah withholding payer number ending in "wth."

[kerrfam]

@mesquitebeanWe are having a lot of trouble with this as well, we are also Utah users. I have confirmed that the withholding number on the W-2 has no hyphens, dashes and ends in a lower case wth. We still get the same error message and the withholding number on the TC-40W still ends in lower case wth. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

[mesquitebean]

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@ kerrfam wrote:

We are having a lot of trouble with this as well, we are also Utah users. I have confirmed that the withholding number on the W-2 has no hyphens, dashes and ends in a lower case wth. We still get the same error message and the withholding number on the TC-40W still ends in lower case wth. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

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Aw, shucks!  That's unusual that it didn't work for you.  Many Utah users with this error have been reporting the lower case "wth"  works. 

However, you didn't mention using a 14-character entry, so I don't know if you did or not.   It has to be 14 characters including the "wth", i.e., there should be 11 numeric digits followed by "wth" without dashes.   And if you also have a Form 1099 that has a Payer withholding ID in that format you have to enter that one in lower case as well.   i.e., you likely have to use lower case on any form with a Payer withholding ID.

Is your number shorter than usual--i.e., is your Payer withholding ID number you were provided less than 14 characters?   If so, try adding some leading zeros to make it 11 numeric digits then end with the "wth" for a total of 14, such as this example where I added zeros: 00012345678wth

If none of those suggestions work, and if you don't get any further suggestions in this user forum, you can contact TurboTax Support for assistance.    If you are using a paid version, you can use this contact form to get a phone number:

Hours are 5AM-9PM Pacific (8AM-12 Midnight Eastern) 7 days/week.

https://support.turbotax.intuit.com/contact

If you are using Free Edition, phone support is not included unless you upgrade to PLUS for a fee. 

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But you can contact a TurboTax Support agent for free directly via messaging at Twitter or Facebook.

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[kerrfam]

@mesquitebeanYes we also confirmed that it is 14-characters including the wth. Yes, it is 11 digits followed by 'wth' without dashes. We do not have a form 1099 that has a payer withholding id in that format. We have turbo tax deluxe and have called and they gave us a short response along the lines of "we know this is an issue, try again in a couple days and it should be fixed". Well it has been about 5 days since then and the issue is still there. This is quite frustrating considering we paid for the deluxe version of this and it still doesn't work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mesquitebean]

@ kerrfam  

I'm sorry you're having trouble.  I'm a fellow user.  I don't know why it's not working for you when the lower case wth does work for quite a few others.   Keep watching this thread, and there are other similar threads on this same issue and see if any Utah filers provide any anecdotes.  

I'm curious if you are using Online Deluxe (web version) or the Deluxe desktop software (CD/download).

A couple other things I can suggest, mainly because they are things I would try myself if I were in that predicament.   Have you tried selecting the entire data field and deleting it?  i.e., clearing out that Payer Withholding ID entirely? Sometimes there can be an extra blank character in there such as a space at the end.  Be sure you type nothing after the wth; do not hit the space bar..   Also, you can try deleting the entire W-2 and then re-entering everything on the W-2 to see if that resets something .   At the W-2 Summary there is probably either a Delete button or trash can symbol for the W-2 in question.

Another thing you might do is contact the Payer (or any payroll service, if applicable) that prepared the W-2 if you can and ask them to verify the Payer withholding ID number.

If TurboTax is working on a fix, then once they have narrowed down the cause, then hopefully they will update it in a future update patch or provide another workaround for those who can't fix it with lower case wth.

@ SteamTrain  Have you seen any additional suggestions in other threads on this topic?   User says lower case wth not working.  And they only have a W-2, no 1099 forms with a state Payer ID ending in wth.

[Regina22]

Changing the last 3 char to lowercase worked perfectly.  Thanks.

[aravel777]

It does no allow me to edit any fields on this page - so I cannot change WTH to lowercase, what do I do?

[kerrfam]

We could not get ours to work for the life of us. We ended up just printing it out and filing by mail instead. Although refunds seems to be taking forever. We sent ours the end of February and are still waiting for it to process. Turbo tax $80 charge or whatever it was down the drain but oh well. I hope it works for you because the online processing I think goes much faster than sending by mail. I totally understand your frustration!!!!

[LenaH]

You must have to go back to your W-2 to edit the Utah payer ID number. 

You can follow these steps in TurboTax to edit your W-2:

1. Open your tax return. 
2. Search for W-2 with the magnifying glass tool on the top of the page. 
3. Select the Jump to W-2 link at the top of the search results.
4. Click Edit next to your W-2.

Enter the payer ID as a 14 character number. The first eleven characters are numeric and the last three are “wth.” Please do not include hyphens.

Example: 12345678901wth.

Utah will NOT accept any other version for the Payer ID. 

For additional information, please see TC-40W, Part 1.

@aravel777

@kerrfam

[goldenboy1996]

This solution worked perfectly for us!  Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Customer aupport has been bogus.  The field says it needs the data from b. That is 9 characters long  (Payer ID  NOT WITHOLDING)

THE ERROR IS BUGGED AND SAYS TO ENTER THE WITHHDING INTO PAYER ID.   THIS IS AN ERROR IN THE SYSTEM.

FIX THIS AND STOP TELLING PEOPLE TO USE A WITHOLDING NUMBER IN THE PAYER ID.

(THIS IS FOR INTUIT)

[mesquitebean]

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@ ZCRM wrote:

Customer aupport has been bogus.  The field says it needs the data from b. That is 9 characters long  (Payer ID  NOT WITHOLDING)

THE ERROR IS BUGGED AND SAYS TO ENTER THE WITHHDING INTO PAYER ID.   THIS IS AN ERROR IN THE SYSTEM.

FIX THIS AND STOP TELLING PEOPLE TO USE A WITHOLDING NUMBER IN THE PAYER ID.

(THIS IS FOR INTUIT)

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This is a user community forum so we won't know anything about your conversation with TurboTax Support.

However, I think we're talking apples and oranges here.   The topic of this thread has nothing to do with "Box b" of a W-2, which is simply the employer's 9-digit EIN (tax ID number) usually located near the top of a W-2 form adjacent to the Employer's name and address.  That's a Federal tax number.

In contrast, the UTAH Employer/Payer withholding ID number is in Box 15 of a W-2 which is labeled "Employer state ID number."

This thread concerns the UTAH Employer/Payer withholding ID number in Box 15 of a W-2, which is a 14-character ID ending in the letters wth.    It has nothing to do with Box b.    Box b is a Federal ID number, while in Utah Box 15 is a Utah state withholding  ID number.

I don't know what your issue is with "Box b", but If someone at Support told you to enter the Utah 14-character withholding number in Box b, then that was incorrect. 

[Anonymous]

Oh I get you. They are very similar, or potentially my issue is the same and I got confused. Thanks for the reply. My apologize for posting my frustration.  I will look into this.