If you’ve every worried about identity theft when mailing employee’s W-2’s, knowing there is a potential for the form to be stolen and the thief to acquire the employee’s social security #, we have a brand new feature just for you!

You now have the option to mask an employee’s social security # on the recipient’s copy of the W-2 form! What is masking? Masking will replace the first 5 digits of the employee’s social security # with “X”‘s so that if the form is stolen the perpetrator will not have access to an employee’s “real” social, thereby reducing the exposure of identity theft. This is the first year the IRS has allowed masking of social security #’s on W-2’s, although in previous years it has been done on the 1099 forms.

You’ll see this new feature when you go to print the W-2 form (employee copies only, federal and state copies do NOT mask). There is a check box towards the bottom right hand side of the “Print W-2 Forms” that says “Mask SSN”. Simple click the box to turn on the option and when you print the W-2 forms, only the last 4 of the social will be visible. This will not apply to Copy A or Copy 1 (for Federal and State government copies), as those are required to have the full social security # on them. If you don’t see this new option on the screen, you may be running an older version before this was released (12/29/2016). Try downloading a new version at your convenience.