Early this morning on my way to my health care job, I swung by the front desk at my hotel job, and picked up my paycheck. Included with the check was my W-2. I stopped at my bank’s ATM near the hospital and deposited the meager little check. Then I went on to work, and spent most of my morning calling patients after their procedures yesterday to see how they were feeling.
I went on my “10” and decided to take a look at my w-2—and noticed right away that the amount of money it said I made last year was far more than what my last pay stub of 2022 said I made. I finished making my calls and clocked out at 12:00—we close the office at noon on Fridays.
I got home and checked my final pay stub against the w-2 he gave me—not only was there a discrepancy between what my last paystub, and my w-2 said I made for the year, there was also a difference in the amounts of federal tax on each of these. My last paystub showed that I paid out over $800 dollars more in taxes than what the w-2 said. Meanwhile, the w-2 had my wages higher by an equal amount of money. In other words, it looks as though he was skimming off my pay by claiming he was taking out more in federal taxes than what he actually was on each paycheck, and then at the end of the year, supplied me with a w-2 that had the real amounts of money that was paid in taxes, as well as what I SHOULD have been paid. Percentage wise, it looks as if exactly 10% of my net pay was being skimmed off.
I might not have even noticed this if I had not started working on my tax return last week, and used the numbers from my last check stub to start filling out the tax software. By the way, there are no benefits at this job, so there are no payroll deductions except Medicare, FICA, and state, local, and federal taxes. It just seems really difficult for me to imagine how this discrepancy could be caused by anything other than wage theft.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe he just made a mistake, right? I am going to have to confront him about this, of course. But if he was doing it to me, he was probably cheating every employee here. Unless he has an awfully convincing explanation, I am going to probably have to turn him in to the state. In all of my years of working, I have never had something like this happen.
I am probably going to get fired.
If you are stuck working for a crappy, underhanded boss, this is a way they can sneakily cheat you out of your pay. I wonder how widespread this trick is. Check your last paystub of the year against your w-2, folks!
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