Printing a W-2

Get your W-2s ready for the Social Security Administration and your employees with Adams Tax Forms Helper form filler.

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Written by Adams Tax Forms
Updated over a week ago

From your dashboard, click on Filings.

Select the W-2(s) you’d like to print.

Next, click the Print button.

Next, tell Adams Tax Forms Helper whether you’d like to print your data onto IRS-approved tax forms, or if you’d like to make plain paper copies. Here, we’ll print onto a blank sheet of paper for records or recipient copies.

Note: you cannot print a Copy A form when printing onto a blank sheet.

Paper filers, select “Print onto Pre-Printed IRS Form” to create your mailable red ink W-2 forms.

eFilers, select “Print onto a Blank Sheet” to create electronic or hard copies for your records. To ensure IRS compliance, these printouts are watermarked and not suitable for filing to the IRS or SSA.

Select the copy you need from the dropdown menu.

Decide if you’d like to mask recipient FIDS. Clicking this box will mask any Federal ID numbers for privacy.

Click “Print Forms.”

The following Print Preview screen will appear. Click the print button in the upper right corner of your screen.

Click “Print” and your W-2 will go to your printer.

To print onto a pre-printed IRS form, select “Print on a Pre-Printed IRS Form.”

Tip: Official IRS copies must be scannable, meaning they’re printed with a special red ink that can be read by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.

Select the copy of the form you want to print.

Click “Print Forms.” Note: you can also click “Mask recipient FIDS” at this step.

On the print preview page, click the printer icon at the top right. Since this is an IRS pre-printed form, you’ll only see the data from your record without any of the borders or lines from the form.

Click “Print” to send your form to the printer.

Tip: It’s a good idea to load plain paper in your printer for a test print. That way, you won’t waste your pre-printed forms! Just hold your plain paper print in front of a form to check the alignment.

Before you run that test print!

It’s also an excellent idea to check your printer settings before you begin.

Tip: The number one cause of avoidable form alignment issues are hidden printer settings for scaling and fit to page. Be sure to check that your Scale is set to Custom and 100%.

You can typically find scaling options in your printer’s system dialog under Printer Properties, Preferences or Advanced settings.

Correcting alignment issues

If your print settings were fine and your test print still revealed some alignment issues, Adams Tax Forms Helper can help you make some adjustments.

So, let’s go back to the print menu.

From the Print Menu screen, you can move your data right, left, up or down using the adjustment indicators. You can alter your margins in the adjustment fields.

Good on you! You’ve successfully printed a W-2 form!

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