The District of Columbia Office of Tax and Revenue has published the 2018 Electronic Filing Specifications for W-2/W-2c and 1099/W-2G.
There are slight modifications to the W-2 specifications that should be noted:
- Data files may now be in either a .txt or .zip format
- If you are a DC taxpayer and indicate as such on the portal, enter your TIN rather than FEIN when prompted (unless your FEIN is your TIN – which is often the case)
- If receiving an “invalid file line length” error for Form W-2c, ensure the length of each line follows the requirements (W-2c: 1,024)
There have also been modifications to the 1099/W-2G specifications that should be noted:
- Positions 723-734, State Income Tax Withheld, must be entered right justified with unused positions zero filled even though this field is optional for the IRS
- The office will no longer accept CDs or other magnetic media for 1099/W-2G. Filers must instead use bulk filing or online data entry at https://mytax.dc.gov
- The only 1099s accepted by DC are:
- 1099-B
- 1099-DIV
- 1099-G
- 1099-INT
- 1099-MISC
- 1099-OID
- 1099-R
- 1099-K (new)
- References for entering one’s FEIN have bee replaced with entering one’s TIN (which will often be the same anyway)
