W-2 Form

W-2. A lesser-known Star Wars droid.

Also, a document that helps you complete (or is the structural foundation of) your taxes.

Every year, you have to file. And pay. And if you're getting a W2 form, it's likely that a human resources bookkeeper who clearly did something very bad in a past life to have to now do this job...is doing them for you, more or less.

The process involves adding up all the money you earned, crunching some numbers, and figuring out what you should have paid in taxes. Then, to get the right bottom line number, you look at the amount that you’ve already paid (you may not have noticed, but your employer has been sending a little money to the government out of each of your paychecks). You compare the amount you owe for the year with the amount you paid.

You either get something back, or you pay the government to make up the shortfall. Welcome to America.

So how do you know all these numbers? Do you just write stuff down as you get paychecks? Make an educated guess?

Well, luckily, your employer tracks all the pertinent info: what you made, what taxes were withheld, etc. They report all this to you on a W-2. You use the info from the W-2 to calculate your taxes.