Where to Find Roth IRA Contributions on Your W-2

A personal Roth IRA does not appear on your W-2 at all. If you’re looking for Roth IRA contributions on a W-2, what you’ll actually find are designated Roth contributions to a workplace plan, reported in Box 12 with the letter code AA, BB, or EE depending on the plan type.¹

Why a Roth IRA Itself Never Shows Up

A Roth IRA is a personal account you open on your own at a brokerage or bank. You fund it from your checking account, not through payroll. Your employer never touches the money, so there’s nothing for the W-2 to report. The W-2 only reflects compensation and deductions that move through your employer’s payroll system.

What people usually mean when they go looking for Roth contributions on the W-2 is money that came out of their paycheck and went into a Roth 401(k), Roth 403(b), or Roth 457(b). Those are called designated Roth contributions, and because the money flows through payroll, the employer has to report them.

The Box 12 Codes to Look For

Designated Roth contributions live in Box 12, in the bottom half of the form. Box 12 has four slots labeled 12a through 12d, and each slot pairs a letter code with a dollar amount. If your employer needs more than four entries, they issue a second W-2 to hold the overflow.²

Three codes cover workplace Roth deferrals:

Code AA is used for Roth contributions to a 401(k). This is the most common one, covering private-sector employees.
Code BB is used for Roth contributions to a 403(b). You’ll see this if you work for a public school, university, hospital, or other tax-exempt organization.
Code EE is used for Roth contributions to a governmental 457(b). This applies to state and local government employees. Tax-exempt organizations that offer a 457(b) cannot have a designated Roth account.³

The dollar amount next to the code is your employee deferral total for the year. It does not include employer matching money, investment earnings, or anything else that reached the account from outside your paycheck.

Don’t Confuse Roth Codes With Pre-Tax Codes

Each Roth code has a pre-tax counterpart that looks similar and means something very different. Code D is pre-tax 401(k). Code E is pre-tax 403(b). Code G is pre-tax 457(b). If you elected the Roth option at work but your W-2 shows D, E, or G instead of AA, BB, or EE, the contributions may have been coded incorrectly.²

The tax treatment behind those codes is opposite. Pre-tax deferrals reduce your Box 1 taxable wages now; you’ll pay income tax on the money when you withdraw it in retirement. Roth deferrals stay in Box 1 because you’ve already paid tax on them, and qualified withdrawals later come out tax-free.⁴ A wrong code changes what you owe.

How the Roth Amount Shows Up Elsewhere on the Form

Box 1

Because designated Roth contributions are after-tax, they stay in your Box 1 wages. Pre-tax deferrals drop Box 1; Roth deferrals do not. If you earn $80,000 and defer $10,000 into a Roth 401(k), Box 1 still shows roughly $80,000, and Box 12 shows the $10,000 next to code AA. Had you made that same deferral pre-tax, Box 1 would fall to around $70,000. The Box 12 figure is telling you how much of your Box 1 wages you routed into a Roth account.⁴

Box 13

If you contributed to a Roth 401(k) or Roth 403(b), your employer should check the “Retirement plan” box in Box 13. That checkbox tells the IRS you’re an active participant in an employer plan, which can limit your ability to deduct traditional IRA contributions depending on your income and filing status.³

One exception: governmental 457(b) plans do not trigger the Box 13 checkbox. If code EE is your only retirement code, Box 13 may be blank, and that participation on its own doesn’t restrict your traditional IRA deduction.

Box 14

Box 14 is labeled “Other” and can hold supplemental information the employer wants to pass along. The IRS permits employers to use Box 14 for voluntary after-tax contributions, which are not the same thing as designated Roth contributions. Your actual Roth deferrals belong in Box 12. If you see a Roth-style label in Box 14 and nothing under code AA, BB, or EE in Box 12, ask payroll to confirm the reporting is right.²

Employer Roth Matching Isn’t on the W-2 Either

Since 2023, employers have been allowed to deposit matching and nonelective contributions directly into a designated Roth account instead of a traditional pre-tax account. When they do, those matching dollars are not on the W-2. They’re reported on a Form 1099-R using distribution code G in box 7.⁵

Employer Roth contributions of this kind are not subject to federal income tax withholding, Social Security tax, or Medicare tax when they go in. You do owe income tax on them for the year they’re allocated to your account, but the reporting runs through the 1099-R rather than the W-2. If you receive an unexpected 1099-R showing employer Roth contributions, that’s the likely explanation.

What the Box 12 Number Does on Your Return

The Roth figure in Box 12 is mostly informational. You don’t enter it directly on Form 1040 because the tax was already handled through payroll withholding, and your Box 1 wages already include those dollars. The IRS uses the W-2 in the background to check that your total deferrals across all employers stayed within the annual limit. If you contributed at two jobs in the same year, keeping the combined total under the limit is your responsibility, not each employer’s.⁶

A personal Roth IRA or backdoor Roth conversion sits outside the W-2 entirely. Those transactions are tracked on Form 8606, which records the nondeductible basis in your traditional IRA accounts so you aren’t taxed twice on future distributions.⁷ Missing Form 8606 when it’s required carries a $50 penalty and, more painfully, leaves the IRS without a record of your basis.⁸

If the Code or Amount Is Wrong

If your W-2 shows code D instead of AA, a wrong dollar figure, or omits your Roth deferrals altogether, start with your employer’s payroll or HR office. They can issue a corrected Form W-2c, and once you have it you may need to file an amended return on Form 1040-X for the affected year.⁹

If your employer hasn’t corrected the form by the end of February, call the IRS at 800-829-1040 or visit a Taxpayer Assistance Center. The IRS will contact your employer and request a corrected W-2 within ten days. If nothing arrives before your filing deadline, you can file using Form 4852 as a substitute W-2, estimating wages and withholdings from your final pay stub. If the corrected W-2 later shows different numbers, reconcile with a 1040-X.¹⁰

1
Internal Revenue Service. General Instructions for Forms W-2 and W-3
2
Internal Revenue Service. General Instructions for Forms W-2 and W-3 (2026)
3
Internal Revenue Service. Common Errors on Form W-2 Codes for Retirement Plans
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Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plans FAQs on Designated Roth Accounts
5
Internal Revenue Service. SECURE 2.0 Act Impacts How Businesses Complete Forms W-2
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Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – 401(k) and Profit-Sharing Plan Contribution Limits
7
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8606, Nondeductible IRAs
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8606 (2025)
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Internal Revenue Service. Fixing Common Mistakes – Correcting a Roth Contribution Failure
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Internal Revenue Service. W-2 – Additional, Incorrect, Lost, Non-Receipt, Omitted