Filing Idaho Form 957-W in QuickBooks: What Gets Prefilled and What You Must Enter
QuickBooks prefills most of Idaho's Form 957-W transmittal automatically, but several fields require manual review before mailing W-2s and 1099-Rs.
QuickBooks Desktop handles the heavy lifting on Idaho’s annual wage and tax transmittal, but employers filing Form 957-W still need to review and manually complete a handful of fields before mailing the package to the State Tax Commission. The form — used to transmit the state copy of Federal Forms W-2 along with any applicable Forms 1099-R — is largely automated, yet users running year-end payroll frequently encounter confusion over which fields QuickBooks populates and which ones remain blank.
What Form 957-W Covers
Form 957-W is the transmittal document that Idaho employers use when sending W-2s and certain 1099-R statements to the Idaho State Tax Commission. Only Forms 1099-R showing Idaho income tax withholding should be attached. Employers required to report and pay withheld taxes on an annual basis need only file Form 957-W. The form, along with the accompanying W-2s and 1099-Rs, is due on or before the last day of February.
The completed package — including a signed Form 956, Form 957-W, and the attached W-2s and 1099-Rs — goes to the Idaho State Tax Commission at P.O. Box 76, Boise, ID 83707-0076.
Fields QuickBooks Fills Automatically
QuickBooks prepopulates a significant portion of the form using company data already on file. Several fields are locked as read-only because they feed into the form’s scanline — the optical-recognition strip at the bottom of the page that Idaho uses to process tax returns automatically.
Company Name and Account Number
The company name, employer account number, and related identifying data are pulled directly from QuickBooks company settings and cannot be edited directly on the form. If any of these fields are incorrect, the fix is not on the form itself — you must update the underlying data in QuickBooks, after which the form will reflect the corrected information.
Federal EIN
The Federal Employer Identification Number appears on the screen for scanline purposes only. It will not print on the official form, so its on-screen presence is purely functional.
Form 957-W Scanline
The scanline data is generated automatically based on Idaho’s state specifications and draws from fields like company name and account number. Because the scanline is what the state uses to optically process the return, accuracy in the underlying QuickBooks data is essential. A wrong account number in QuickBooks translates directly to a misread scanline on the printed form.
Fields Requiring Manual Entry
This is where most users run into trouble. QuickBooks does not fill in every field, and assuming it does can result in an incomplete or inaccurate filing.
Number of W-2s
QuickBooks tracks and calculates W-2 data on a per-employee basis. The W-2 count should generally be accurate, but it is worth verifying. If the number shown does not match what you are actually filing, modify the line directly.
Number of 1099s
This is a common stumbling block. QuickBooks tracks and calculates W-2 data but does not automatically count 1099 statements. You must manually enter the number of 1099-R forms you have issued for the year that show Idaho income tax withholding.
Penalty
If W-2 forms are filed late, Idaho assesses a penalty that must be added to the form. Follow the instructions printed on line 4 of Form 957-W to calculate the correct penalty amount. QuickBooks does not compute this for you.
Reviewing Withholding Amounts and Exporting Data
Employers who want to verify where the withholding figures on the form originated can use the hyperlinks within the form window to trace the numbers back to their source in QuickBooks. For those who need to summarize payroll data externally — for instance, in a spreadsheet — QuickBooks provides an option to export the relevant data to Microsoft Excel.
Saving a Copy for Your Records
Once the form is complete, it can be saved as a PDF directly from the form window. Keeping a copy of the filed transmittal and the associated W-2s and 1099-Rs is standard practice for year-end record retention.
The Bottom Line
Form 957-W is one of the more straightforward state transmittals in QuickBooks, but the manual fields — particularly the 1099 count and any late penalty — are easy to overlook. The read-only fields draw directly from company data, so any corrections must be made at the source in QuickBooks rather than on the printed form. Reviewing each field before mailing is the simplest way to avoid processing delays from a misread scanline or an incomplete transmittal.