What is the procedure for correcting prior year returns?
For illustrative purposes, the procedures that follow assume a reporting year of 2003. For years other than 2003, simply replace all occurrences of 2003 with the year to be used. To Correct Annual Wage Reports (W2, W2C) Complete Form W2C for each employee using the current year’s software. Make sure you enter 2003 in the ‘Year Corrected’ field on Form W2C. Print and mail the employee copies. Either print or efile the SSA copies. To Correct Information Returns (1099, 1098, 5498, W2G) In order to correct a filer’s Information Returns, a correction client must be used. A correction client is one whose ‘Corrected Returns Only’ indicator is set. When setting up the correction client be sure to use the current year’s software and set the ‘Reporting Year’ to 2003. Enter all of your 1- and 2-Transaction corrections into this new filer’s Information Returns. When done, you can safely e-file these corrections as usual.
