WHAT IS BUSINESS SERVICES ONLINE?

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Business Services Online offers Internet services for businesses and employers who exchange information with Social Security. This handbook focuses on wage reporting by employers as well as third-party submitters.

As a registered Business Services Online user who selected wage reporting suite of services during registration, you are able to:

• Create/Resume Forms W-2/W-3 Online,
  
  
• Create/Resume Forms W-2c/W-3c Online,
  
  
• Save Submitted Reports to Your Computer,
  
  
• Submit/Resubmit a Formatted Wage File,
  
  
• Submit a Special Wage Payments File,
  
  
• View Submission Status to check report status, errors, and notice information for previously submitted wage reports,
  
  
• View Employer Report Status to check report status or view errors for reports submitted for your company by a third party, and
  
  
• Request an Extension to File a Resubmission.
  

Select User Registration Handbook to view a Portable Document Format (PDF) version of the Business Services Online Integrated Registration Services (IRES) User Registration Handbook. Select Wage Reporting Handbook to view a PDF version of the Wage Reporting Handbook.

NEW FOR TAX YEAR 2012

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The following are new for Tax Year 2012:

• W-2 Online:
  
  
  • Accepts prior years (TY10 and TY 11) W-2s in addition to the current year W-2s;
    
    
  • Accepts Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Form W-2 (W-2CM);
    
    
  • Adds barcodes to PDFs and change the PDF from 4 forms (3 forms for territorial) per page to 2 forms per page;
    
    
  • Implements stored procedure and screen changes that allow submitters to use the data that was captured in the previous year to pre-fill parts of the Form W-2;
    
    
  • Alerts are added to the post-able fields containing over $10 million. Management Information (MI) on these alerts is also captured; and
    
    
  • If a submission is deleted from the Submission Status application, the PDF version of the submitted report will not be displayed on W-2 Online.
    
    
• W-2c Online:
  
  
  • Accepts corrections on previous corrections;
    
    
  • Increases the number of forms allowed per report from 5 to 25; and
    
    
  • If a submission is deleted from the Submission Status application, the PDF version of the submitted report will not be displayed on W-2c Online.


• Submission Status application adds Delete function to allow users deleting reports with a RECEIVED status.
  
  
• Acknowledge Resubmission Notice function has been removed from the Electronic Wage Reporting suite of services.
  

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

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SECURITY

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128-BIT ENCRYPTION

To determine whether your browser supports 128-bit encryption, select Help/About from your browser menu. Most browsers will display the phrase ?128-bit encryption? or "128-bit cipher strength.? If you are unsure whether your browser supports 128-bit encryption, contact the software company that developed the browser.

COOKIES

To work with Business Services Online, your browser must be set to accept cookies. This is the default setting for most browsers. If you receive a request to store a file on your computer, select ?Yes?   Business Services Online cookies is deleted when you close your browser.

E-MAIL

E-mail to or from Social Security does not provide security features. Please do not include private information, such as your Social Security Number, in e-mail messages.

PRIVACY ACT AND PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT NOTICE

We ask for the information on Forms W-2, W-3, W-2c and W-3c to carry out the Internal Revenue laws of the United States. We need it to figure and collect the right amount of tax. Section 6051 and its regulations require you to furnish wage and tax statements to employees and to the Social Security Administration. Section 6109 requires you to provide your employer identification number. Routine uses of this information include giving it to the Department of Justice for civil and criminal litigation, and to cities, states, and the District of Columbia for use in administering their tax law. If you fail to provide this information in a timely manner, you may be subject to penalties.

You are not required to provide the information requested on a form that is subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act unless the form displays a valid OMB control number. Books or records relating to a form or its instructions must be retained as long as their contents may become material in the administration of any Internal Revenue law. Generally, tax returns and return information are confidential, as required by section 6103.

DATES & TIMES

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Business Services Online normally operates during the following hours, including holidays, and may be available at other times as well:

PASSWORDS

Passwords will expire after 90 days. If your password expires, you will be prompted to change your password when you log in.

DECEMBER 2012

Wage reporting applications will not be available from December 08, 2012 until December 10, 2012.

BEGINNING DECEMBER 10, 2012

Business Services Online will begin accepting Tax Year 2012 submissions on December 10, 2012.

Business Services Online may experience delays in processing submissions due to high submission volume. Please check the Business Services Online Internet Web site for updated information regarding potential delays in processing your submission.

MARCH 31, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service will consider electronic annual wage reports for Tax Year 2012 to be late if they are submitted after March 31, 2013.