A W-2 is an American tax form. At the start of each year, every US employer must give each worker a W-2 showing two things for the year just finished: how much that person earned, and how much tax was already taken out of their pay before they received it. The worker then files it together with their tax return to the IRS, the American tax office, which uses it to work out whether too much or too little tax was taken — and therefore whether the worker gets money back or owes more. Its full name is 'Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement', but nobody says that; in speech it is just 'my W-2', said 'double-you two'. It is an ordinary countable noun: a W-2, two W-2s. You will hear it every January and February, when Americans complain about waiting for theirs to arrive. The word does one more job that learners should know about. Because a W-2 is what employees get, and freelancers get a different form called a 1099, Americans use 'W-2' as a shorthand for the kind of job itself: 'a W-2 job', 'I'd rather be W-2 than 1099' — meaning a proper employed position with tax handled for you, benefits, and less paperwork, rather than contract work. Used this way it functions almost as an adjective. This whole area is very specific to the United States; Taiwan's 扣繳憑單 does a similar job, but the systems are not identical, so treat the words as close cousins rather than exact equals.