W-2's

Hi there, HenPam. 

Thank you for reaching out to the Community. Let me share some information on why you see boxes 3 and 5 are not correct in the W2. In QuickBooks, you may see boxes 1 and 3 have different amounts and wonder if this is wrong. In some cases, the different amounts are correct. It may depend on the deductions that may affect your employees’ W-2s.  

Please see this article and Understand why the wage amounts are different on your employee's W-2. To comprehend the situations and examples that can affect these boxes. 

Additionally, I've also attached some articles you can use to learn more about filing W-2 forms, as well as some answers to frequently asked questions:

• File your W-2 forms
• Get answers to your W-2 questions

Keep us posted if you need anything else regarding running payroll forms in QuickBooks. Have a great day and stay safe!

The wages in boxes 3 and 5 are simply the sum of the taxed wages, the Wage Base, for all of the paychecks in the year.

To see what those wages are, run the Payroll Detail Review report. It will show you, for each tax and each employee, a line item from each paycheck showing the Wage Base, the resulting tax amount, the amount QuickBooks thinks is correct, the difference, and whether or not someone manually overrode the tax amount.