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New Member
July 24, 2026
Question

Correcting Medicare

  • July 24, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 8 views

Hi!
The “Subject to Medicare” button got incorrectly checked, and an employee’s paystub got processed with no MC withheld.

After turning “Subject to Medicare” back on, I manually calculated the missing amount and added the missing MC tax to be withheld from the employee’s next payroll. 

Now I’m processing quarterly reports and found out Quickbooks self-adjusted and removed my correction. How do I prevent this going forward?

I’m on Quickbooks Payroll Desktop.

1 reply

QuickBooks Team
July 24, 2026

When you checked Subject to Medicare back on, QuickBooks Desktop automatically calculated the catch-up tax for the next payroll. Because you added it manually, the system saw the extra entry as a duplicate and wiped out your manual edit to keep the Year-To-Date (YTD) math balanced.

 

To handle it going forward, let the software auto-calculate the missing amount on the next paycheck. Avoid manual edits on the stub, as QuickBooks's tax engine will usually recalculate and overwrite them.

 

Then, use Liability Adjustments for past quarters. This locks the fix in without QB overriding it.

 

 

  1. Go to Employees > Payroll Taxes.
  2. Select Liabilities > Adjust Payroll Liabilities.
  3. Set the date to the end of the affected quarter, and enter the adjustment there.

 

After that, run a quick Payroll Summary report for that employee. Compare their YTD Medicare tax withheld to their YTD wages to see if QB's automatic adjustment already brought their balance up to date.

 

That's it. Let me know if you have further questions or concerns.