Summary

Check Processes and Policies at Year End

Key Year End Policies and Processes

• Filing Deadlines: Tax agencies extend deadlines for many annual filings and tax payments until the end of February to accommodate the increased Q4 and Year End workload. Check guarantees filings will be submitted by the agency deadline for all companies in good standing without filing blockers. Set expectations with your customers that some filings will not be completed until February—this is compliant with agency deadlines.

• Company Tax Document Availability: Draft company tax documents will be published to the Company Documents product in two batches. The first batch—covering filings due by the end of January—will be available by the second Monday of January. The second batch—covering filings due by the end of February—will be available by the second Monday of February. These are draft copies of employer filing data only. Once the agency accepts the filing, we'll refresh the document to reflect the finalized data.

• Printing and Mailing W-2s and 1099s: To remain compliant, Check will print and mail W-2s and 1099s for workers without electronic consent and for terminated workers.
• Consent for electronic delivery can be set on the Employee object and Contractor object, and it can be set on a company level on the Company object. Note, the setting on the company object does override any settings on the employee and contractor levels.
• Check will mail W-2s and 1099s to all terminated workers—regardless of employee and contractor electronic consent settings—to ensure they can access these documents even if they've lost access to online portals. Note, the setting on the company object does override this.
• Check will mail new W-2s and W-2Cs until the personal tax return deadline of April 15th. After that, the company should plan to print the copy made available and send to the employee.
• Check does not currently have support for mailing 1099-NEC corrections — the company should plan to print the copy made available and send to the contractor.
• These documents will be mailed to the resident address stored on the Employee object and Contractor object.

• How Corrections are Handled at Year End: Corrections at Year End work the same way they do during any other filing period. Corrections can be submitted anytime through our Help Center. The SLA for corrections is 20 business days, but this SLA pauses during January while our team focuses on original filings. The SLA resumes on the first business day of February. To avoid needing amendments, advise your customers to submit corrections by early December—this gives our team time to complete them before December 31st.

• Amending W-2s: Check automates the most common situations that trigger W-2Cs, ensuring employees receive copies quickly. New drafts are furnished via the Employee Tax Statements and Tax Packages APIs and the Filing Preview Component by the Monday following any system changes.
• If pay history corrections affect values reported in W-2 Boxes 1–13 or 16–19 (state and local), a W-2C draft will automatically be made available by the following Monday and any required agency filings will be completed thereafter without a Support request.
• If an employee's SSN is updated in the system, Federal W-2C drafts will automatically be made available by the following Monday, and the Federal filing will be completed without a Support request. A Support ticket is only required to request SSN updates on state and local filings.
• We do not automatically furnish or file W-2Cs for employee name changes—agencies prioritize the SSN field, so these amendments are not required. If your employee requests a name change amendment, update their name in our system and submit a Support ticket to request a W-2C.
• Updates to employer FEIN or EIN values are more complex. They often result in two sets of amendments—one for the previously reported FEIN/EIN and one for the new FEIN/EIN. Reach out to Support to request these changes and note that this process may take longer to resolve.
• No W-2C amendments are required for changes to the address field or values in Box 14. Check does not furnish W-2C copies for these situations. If your employee needs updated Box 14 information for their personal tax returns, they can retrieve these values from pay stubs or payroll journals.
• If you add an employee to pay history for the prior year who didn't previously have any wages, this will generate a new W-2 (not a W-2C) for the missed employee. These W-2s are triggered automatically, with a draft copy available the Monday following the addition of wages.

• Amending 1099s: Changes to 1099s are not yet automated. Please contact our Support team for any changes needed to contractor 1099-NEC filings.

• Holiday Coverage: There are a number of holidays around the Year End period where Check Support is closed. If any technical incidents arise, our team will be paged and will respond accordingly. Check and banks will be closed on the following days:
• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Day
• New Years Day
• Martin Luther King Day
• President’s Day

How You Should Prepare Your Customers

Ensure all of their Data is Correct

• Company Data: Confirm that all Federal, State, and Local IDs are present and accurate. For companies that have applied for IDs, ensure the correct IDs are entered so filing can be completed.

• Employee Data: Review employee SSNs to confirm they are present and accurate—missing SSNs are a top driver of failed filings and year-end amendments. Confirm resident addresses to ensure W-2s are delivered to the right location if the worker will receive a mailed copy. Verify workplaces reflect the correct location where the employee is actually working.

• Contractor Data: Review contractor SSNs or tax identification numbers to confirm they are present and accurate—missing or incorrect identifiers are a top driver of failed filings and year-end amendments. Verify the contractor is correctly classified as an individual or business. Confirm the contractor address is correct if they will receive a mailed 1099-NEC.

• Payroll Corrections: Advise your customers to submit any payroll corrections as soon as possible to have them included in Year End filing. This includes voiding payrolls, moving wages, adding benefits, or making other adjustments.

Include any Missing Data

• Add workers paid outside the system, including terminated workers: Check can only process W-2s or 1099s for workers in our system. Advise your customers to add all workers and their associated payments for filing. Customers who started using your payroll service mid-year may have omitted employees who were terminated before they joined. We need information about all employees and contractors who received wages during the year—even if they were paid through another payroll provider. This ensures the Social Security Administration processes a complete set of W-2 and 1099 forms for the company.

• Report any Disability Payments: Customers may need to report disability benefits to Check if employees took sick leave and received compensation from a third-party insurance company or the state. These benefits are taxable when the employer pays some or all of the premium. The taxable amount depends on the employer's coverage percentage (e.g., 100% covered = 100% taxable, 60% coverage = 60% taxable). The third-party agent withholds FICA taxes and any elected federal withholding from the benefit. Your customer is responsible for the employer portion of FICA and FUTA. State requirements vary. W-2 reporting requirements depend on the arrangement between the third-party agent and your customer. If your customer will file the W-2 for these payments, Check needs the benefit payment amount and taxes withheld for the year. Submit a support ticket with this information, which is typically included on a provided notice. If unsure, have your customer contact their insurance company to confirm whether they will file W-2s on behalf of the employer for those benefit amounts.

• Report any Group Term Life: If your customer does not track group term life insurance per payroll, they may need to report the imputed cost of coverage exceeding $50,000 as part of the employee's income. Calculate the total by following the IRS instructions. GTL imputed income amounts are subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes. Group Term Life can be reported as an earning type in payroll—more detail here.

• 2% Shareholder Earnings: A 2% shareholder is a person who directly or indirectly owns more than 2% of outstanding stock of the corporation or stock possessing more than 2% of the total combined voting power of all of the stock of a corporation.
• 2% shareholders (including spouse, children or grandchildren) are not eligible to participate in cafeteria plans under IRC Section 125.
• 2% Shareholder benefits are taxable non cash fringe benefits provided to 2% shareholders.
• 2% shareholder benefits should be reported as earnings in Check, and full details can be found in this Help Center article. If these haven’t been reported, please submit these earnings as a correction to Check by December 3rd, so these can be accurately reporting in end of year filings.

Verifying Information in Check’s Product

• Check’s Filing Preparation Checklist Component: Check’s Filing Preparation Checklist component, also available through Console, is a one stop shop for your employers to ensure all of their data is up to date for Year End. It can be used to:
• Confirm Company Data: Review all existing Federal and State IDs and fill in IDs that were previous applied for or were missing.
• View W-2s and W-2Cs: Review all Employee W-2 and W-2C drafts to confirm that the information is accurate and the wages are what the employee would expect at that point in the year.
• Other Reminders: Employers will also receive prompts to review and update team information, add payrolls run outside the system, review and report missing benefit data, and prepare for the new year.

• Confirm Company Standing: Check will not file for companies that are not in good standing. Review this status through Check's API by navigating to the company object and checking where in_good_standing is false. You can also find this in Console on the Company Details page.

• Review Employee and Contractor Data: Review the accuracy of all worker data by auditing Employee objects and Contractor objects in Check. Check for missing or invalid SSNs by reviewing workers and checking their ssn_validation_status or if they have a remaining_steps in Onboard status that includes SSN. You can also review resident addresses and workplace addresses here. To confirm accuracy, present a list of workers to your employers in your application or send an email to each worker with their data on file for confirmation.

• Missing Payrolls: Advise your employers to review their payroll journals for the year to confirm all payrolls are present and accurate. This can be done through Check's API by accessing the Payroll Journal report or by using Check's reports component.

• Reviewing Benefits: To review all benefits set up for your company, use Check's API to list all benefits for a specific worker or company. Your employers can review and confirm all benefits are accurate, then update any benefits that need changes to reflect new contribution amounts and the relevant effective date.

Executing Year End

Distributing W-2s

Distributing 1099s

Obtaining Company Tax Documents

Handling Common Year End Requests

• Submitting any Corrections, Amendments or Third Party Sick Pay: To submit any corrections, amendments or third party sick pay, submit these as requests through the Help Center. The only exception is for historical pay adds — those should be submitted directly through Console under the Payrolls tab (details here). As a reminder, amendment processing does not start until the beginning of February, to allow for time for original filings to process.

• Gross Up Payrolls: You may receive requests to support "gross up" payrolls, where the employer wants to pay a specific net amount to their employee (or has already paid them) and needs taxes calculated on top of that amount. Check does not currently support this, but you can use this calculator to determine the required gross pay amount. Then create a corrections template or add it as a historical pay entry in Console using those calculated values.

Helpful Resources

Sample Knowledge Base Content

Billing

• Printing and mailing W-2s and 1099s (per document): $2

• Untimely Tax Filing Where Delay Is Not Check's Fault (including refiling): $150

• Amended Employer Tax Filing (per return): $150

• Tax Returns for Employers No Longer Using the Services: $200 per ER for all filings.

W-2 and 1099 FAQs

Year End Payroll FAQ