w2 questions

[stevew]

I work for a rather large company, id estimate that they may have in the range of 6-10K employees, maybe a bit less. One thing that bothers me, though, is that it takes them until pretty much exactly the last minute in january to send everyone their w2's so that we can do our taxes. Is there some sort of gain that a company gets by not printing and mailing them till the absolute last possible second? Surely in the age of computers, it doesnt take 4 weeks to get the info together to mail it to you.....hell, our last paydate this year is the 19th.

Pretty much the main reason i care is cause i should get a decent return this year, hopefully enough to pay off some of my wife's student loans completely, and to offset this rediculous heating costs.

[Farrah Whitworth-Rahn]

Originally Posted by stevew

Is there some sort of gain that a company gets by not printing and mailing them till the absolute last possible second?

Nope. Usually companies who do payroll in house wait until the last second. Paychex or ADP usually sends W-2's in the first pay period of the new year.

[wishbone]

We just received a company email saying that they can provide our W2s electronically now, here's a snip:

"Your W-2 will be posted on a secure Web site in late January, well before you would normally receive it in your mailbox. You will receive notification when your W-2 is available, along with instructions for retrieval"

The most this saves me is a week, I'm guessing, and I'm not sure I trust it anyway since the email makes it sound like another company (W-2 eXpress) will handle all the work. I don't trust the company I work for enough to trust whoever they contracted this work out to.