W-2 Box 14 — Other (state disability, union dues, RRTA, NYC SDI, and more)

What Box 14 means

Box 14 is the W-2's catch-all 'Other' box. Per the IRS General Instructions for Forms W-2 and W-3, an employer may use it for any other information it wants to give an employee, as long as each item is labeled. The instructions' own examples include state disability insurance taxes withheld, union dues, uniform payments, health insurance premiums deducted, nontaxable income, educational assistance payments, a minister's parsonage allowance and utilities, and the value of 100% personal use of a leased vehicle. Employers can also use Box 14 for after-tax retirement-plan amounts — nonelective employer contributions, voluntary after-tax (non-Roth) contributions, required employee contributions, and employer matching contributions.

Because there's no IRS-defined code list for Box 14 the way there is for Box 12, the same abbreviation can mean different things at different employers. 'SDI' almost always means state disability insurance, but which state program it refers to — and whether it's even the same kind of tax — depends entirely on where you work: California splits it into two separate lines (SDI and VPDI), New Jersey often combines unemployment, disability, and family-leave withholding into one line, and a growing number of states run separate paid-family-leave programs with their own withholding line. If a Box 14 label isn't self-explanatory, ask payroll what it means rather than guessing from a generic list.

Some Box 14 items change your tax return; most don't. State disability or paid-family-leave withholding is sometimes deductible as a state tax on Schedule A if you itemize — but only if your state characterizes it as a tax rather than an insurance premium, so check your state's specific rule. Union dues shown here are generally not deductible on your federal return: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended the miscellaneous itemized deduction for unreimbursed employee business expenses (which covered union dues) for tax years 2018 through 2025, even though some states still allow it. After-tax (non-Roth) retirement contributions shown here are purely for your own records — track them, because they establish the cost basis used later to figure the tax-free portion of pension or annuity distributions.

RSU or stock-vesting amounts some employers list in Box 14 are informational — that income is already included in Box 1 as ordinary compensation the moment the shares vest, so the Box 14 entry isn't a separate income item; it's there to help you match what you sold later to what you were already taxed on. The same goes for a charitable-giving total some employers list: it can help you total payroll-deducted donations, but it isn't itself proof of a deduction — you still need your own contemporaneous written acknowledgment to claim it on Schedule A.

The single-line Box 14 described above is about to change. For the W-2 you're filing now — tax year 2025, due by mid-April 2026 — Box 14 is still one 'Other' line, and everything above applies to it. Starting with the 2026 Form W-2 (the one employers issue in January 2027), the IRS splits it into Box 14a—Other, which keeps every item described above, and a new Box 14b—Treasury Tipped Occupation Code(s). Box 14b only comes into play if your employer also reports cash tips using the new Box 12 code TP (see the W-2 Box 12 Code TP page for how that tips deduction works) — when it does, the employer must list up to two IRS-assigned occupation codes in Box 14b so the tips can be matched to a qualifying occupation. If your W-2 doesn't show a 14a/14b split, you're looking at a pre-2026 form, and Box 14 works exactly as described above.

FAQ