Employment Verification When the Company Closed: IRS Transcripts, Social Security Records and the Other Records That Exist

None of these documents is a verification letter. Each is an official record of pay that an employer filed while it existed, which is what a verifier is trying to confirm.

The IRS keeps what employers and payers report about you. The wage and income transcript “shows data from information returns we receive such as Forms W-2, 1099, 1098 and Form 5498,” and the IRS makes transcripts available “for the past ten tax years”¹. You can order it through your IRS online account or by mailing Form 4506-T, at no charge¹.

Two limits matter for verification. The transcript “doesn’t include state or local W-2 information”¹, so the California wages line is not on it. And the current year “may be incomplete until employers report earnings,” which the IRS says can take until later in the year¹; a job that ended three months ago may not appear yet.

If a verifier insists on the W-2 form itself rather than the data, the IRS can supply a copy only as part of a copy of your whole tax return, on Form 4506, for a $30 fee per return as of October 2026, and only if the W-2 was attached to a paper return¹. The Social Security Administration can provide a copy of a W-2 it received, free “if you need it for a Social Security-related reason” and for a $62 fee otherwise as of October 2026¹.

Every W-2 wage an employer reported went to the Social Security Administration. The agency’s own FAQ says a Social Security Statement, available online through a personal my Social Security account, “shows your current earnings record and history”². The account page lists “Review your earnings history” and “Review earnings for accuracy” among what it does; sign-in runs through Login.gov or ID.me and needs an email address, a government-issued photo ID and a phone or a device with a camera³. Someone without an account can request a paper Statement, which “will arrive by mail in 4 to 6 weeks”².

The record is organized by year, as earnings totals. The agency’s pages do not say that it names each employer; the IRS transcript carries the employer’s name.

The Work Number, run by Equifax, holds payroll data that employers or their payroll providers send after each pay cycle; the Equifax guide for employers describes the data arriving from the payroll provider “after each payroll cycle,” and says the service is free to employers and employees while verifiers pay a fee⁹. If your closed employer used a payroll service that reported to it, the record of your employment and pay may still be there, and a lender, landlord or screening company that uses the service will see it.

You can see it too. The Work Number’s own page says employees can “view your Employment Data Report, freeze your data, or dispute it,” and that the report shows which verifiers requested your data “in the past 24 months”⁴. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lists The Work Number as a consumer reporting company that “provides a free report on request,” “will freeze your consumer report if you request it,” and must investigate a dispute free of charge, with the dispute made to both the company and the source of the data⁵. Requesting your own report does not affect credit scores⁵.

Good to know Whether a closed employer’s data stays in the database depends on what its payroll provider sent before it stopped running payroll; neither Equifax nor the CFPB publishes a rule for closed employers.

Pay stubs you kept count as documentary evidence under the federal SNAP regulation: “Examples of documentary evidence include wage stubs, rent receipts, and utility bills,” verification “shall not be limited to any single type of document,” and the agency “must accept any reasonable documentary evidence provided by the household”⁶.

If you kept nothing, California sets deadlines for access to employment records. Under Labor Code section 226, an employer must let a current or former employee inspect or copy the payroll records for that employee no later than 21 calendar days after a written or oral request¹⁰. Under section 1198.5, personnel records must be made available within 30 calendar days of a written request, the employer must keep them for at least three years after employment ends, and a former employee may have copies mailed on paying the postage¹⁰. Under section 432, the employer must give you a copy of any document you signed to get or keep the job, such as an offer letter¹⁰. Federal rules add that the employer keeps your Form I-9 for three years after hire or one year after the job ends, whichever is later¹¹. A business that dissolved may have an owner, a successor company or a payroll provider holding those files; the request goes to whoever is left.

To find out whether the company still legally exists, and who its agent for service of process was, the California Secretary of State’s bizfile Online search covers corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships and can issue certificates of status¹².

Landlords. No law limits what a landlord may ask about employment. If the landlord orders a tenant screening report, the FTC treats it as a consumer report: the landlord needs your permission or a permissible purpose, and a denial, a larger deposit or a co-signer requirement based on the report triggers an adverse action notice with the right to a free copy within 60 days¹³. No cited page says what a landlord accepts in place of an employer’s letter.

Mortgage lenders. Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide requires a verbal verification of employment within 10 business days before the note date for borrowers using employment income, and names the acceptable methods as “verbal, written, through an employment verification vendor, or another method the lender considers reasonable, verifiable, and appropriate”⁷. The lender “must identify, evaluate, and resolve any employment changes or discrepancies” between the application and what it finds⁷.

Benefit agencies. For SNAP, documentary evidence comes first, the household gets at least 10 days to provide it, and where documents are not enough the agency may use a collateral contact, a person outside the household who can confirm the facts⁶. The regulation names employers among acceptable collateral contacts.

Background-check companies. A screening company confirms dates and title by calling the employer or by using a service such as The Work Number⁹. The IRS transcript carries the employer’s name and the year’s wages¹.

The EDD. The unemployment application asks for every employer in the 18 months before the claim, with dates and wages, and the EDD notifies the last employer, which is required by law to provide information that may affect eligibility⁸. A closed employer cannot answer the notice, but the benefit is based on wages earned in the base period, and your pay stubs and W-2s show what those wages were⁸.