complicate through no fault of my own.

The fed gubment paid me for two pay periods after I resigned my position. I immediately alerted HR upon receiving the first erroneous payment. The acknowledged my email and started looking into it. 2 weeks later, I got another payment. I obviously had taxes deducted for both. I've been involved in an endless amount of back and forth about how to pay the money back since October. In early November, they told me that my overpayment stuff had been filed and that I would be getting notice by email and mail about how to pay the money back, obviously including the taxes since I guess they can't get the money back from the IRS directly. Here we are in January, and no one has contacted me despite numerous emails during in November, December and January that I sent. My W2 became available on Employee Express this week and includes the income that was paid in error.

Today I got an email from someone that suggested I file my tax return minus those two pay periods. Then wait for a notice from the IRS that my W2 and income don't jive. Then submit all my emails as explanation. What??? Why would I want to give the IRS red flags? I then asked if I could file with the W2 data and just file an amended return later with the corrected W2. I was told that if payroll issues me a corrected W2 then I can file the amended return. If? If I pay you back gross income from last year, wouldn't you have to at some point have that reflected somewhere on a tax document?

So, what do I do? Do I file with the W2 data and hope to be able to file an amended return later? Do I file minus that income and invite mail in my mail box from the IRS? I'm considering preparing two returns to see what happens to my refund with both options, but I'd think that underreporting compared to the W2 would be problematic. My understanding before getting the email today was that I'd have to deduct this overpaid paid back income from my 2021 income since the money will be paid back in 2021, which I probably won't be able to do because I don't have enough in itemized deductions to ever use itemized deductions.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.