Ask HN: Help with Gusto? 2021 payroll being double reported to IRS

by enlightens on 1/27/2023, 7:58:31 PM with 11 comments
10 days ago our 2021 W-2 forms, from two years ago, were updated by Gusto with W-2c forms that combine payments from two different tax IDs. Because of this, 2021 Q1 payroll is now double reported to the IRS (under the correct FEIN and the incorrect FEIN). This means that until the is fixed the IRS thinks our employees have a rather large tax payment deficit.

Our payroll department and individual employees have been trying to explain the mistake to Gusto but so far there haven't been any responses. While we'd love to see an immediate fix, at a minimum we'd like to find out the typical response time on these sorts of issues because front-line customer support has been unable to tell us when the specialist team will get to our support tickets.

Is there anyone out there who has some thoughts or connections to help us out? Thank you.

  • by codegeek on 1/28/2023, 12:32:12 AM

    When they used to be zenpayroll, they were "delightful" and I remember that was their tagline. Not so much these days. They went downhill fast from having great Live Chat support (used to take seconds to get good answers from a real person) to email based tickets that sometimes don't get answered for 24+ hours. I guess they are at Web Scale at least. We have come full circle to Gusto becoming another ADP.

  • by twunde on 1/28/2023, 12:02:28 AM

    Not useful for the OP, but for anyone considering Gusto I would highly recommend just going with a PEO, since they just deal with so many more things including remote workers in the US.

    I'm at the point where if a company is using Gusto I won't accept their offer since I spent 6 months+ dreaming with healthcare billing issues because they didn't terminate the healthcare plan correctly

  • by verdverm on 1/27/2023, 8:41:49 PM

    I've been struggling to get W2 errors resolved for months... been passed around and given vague answers and requests so many times... Gusto was supposed to be the company with great user support. My how they have fallen...

    Maybe it's time we banded together to get attention on social media. That seems the best way to get fixes these days...

  • by londont on 1/29/2023, 4:55:56 AM

    Hi @enlightens, I'm one of the founders at Gusto. Really sorry to hear about the tax issue your company is seeing. We've escalated this and we're going to get this resolved ASAP. After that, we'll make sure we learn form this issue to better inform similar situations in the future. If you'd like to connect w me directly, please DM me at twitter.com/tomerlondon and I'd love to talk.

  • by drwl on 1/27/2023, 11:31:38 PM

    It’s unfortunate but tweeting or getting attention on LinkedIn can get you greater visibility. Depending on your company size too I would imagine you would have higher level of support.

    Am ex gusto

  • by gault8121 on 1/27/2023, 11:08:51 PM

    Gusto has horrible customer support.we switched to JustWorks, which isn’t perfect but much better. Gusto had good customer support when they launched, and it got much worse over time. For high stakes tax work they need professionals who take this work seriously, not a ticketing system where every ticket is completely disconnected from every other ticket.

  • by shishy on 1/28/2023, 2:24:55 PM

    Hi OP- could you post an update here after? In the past I used PayChex instead of Gusto because I was worried about the lack of support so I'm curious how this ends up resolving now that you found an escalation specialist.

    Hope it all gets sorted out.