Overtime Premium for Firefighters

[cclark]

I do many firefighters & police officer tax returns. For firefighter they work 56 hour per week. on the W-2 box 14 says OT Premium is $13,689. My question does this amount have to be divided by 3? They do get 1 1/2 for overtime. The last pay stub has so many different overtime amount but all say at 1 1/2. I guess I am confused when it state OT and when it states OT Premium. 

Thanks for all your help!

[kobe22]

Hello, any OT in Box 14 is the 1/2. Put it directly on line 14d.

[MICHAELMARS]

Firefighters and Police get many types of overtime, some 1.5 some 2.0 some covered by outside agencies for special assignments.  I have been getting letters from the union stating what the deductible amount is.  

[BobKamman]

@kobe22 Do you have a source for that?  My view is that any number in Box 14 is any given bookkeeper's opinion on any given day of what any given employer might have done, half the time before the law was enacted.  

[kobe22]

That's right anyone could have just put a number in their to the best of their knowledge. The best source is using the last paycheck stub, asking questions to see if they qualify for any OT listed and calculating the OT. Sometimes it's accurate and sometimes it is off by a dollars.  I haven't ran into any qualifying OT where it is significantly off.

[BobKamman]

@kobe22 "The best source is asking questions . . ."

You should look into copyrighting that.

[Skylane]

FYI….. if you enter OTprem in box 14 it will trigger and enter the OT into the W2 worksheet below

[qbteachmt]

Do you also see a quantity? "OT Premium" typically is the amount above base, and "OT" by itself is the full rate already marked up, so to speak. You should be able to figure if it is 1.5 already, from their base pay rate. There might be Shift Premium or Shift Differential, which also is the markup component above base.