My employee payroll taxes withheld does not match what I am manually calculating them to be. How do I see the logic behind the amounts calculated by QBO?

You can view the federal and provincial taxes withheld for each employee by running your employee payroll and checking the item details, Shayne.

It's also important to note that QuickBooks Online (QBO) has built-in algorithms to calculate payroll taxes based on employee information and the regulations established by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and applicable provincial tax authorities. For more details about Canadian business owner's guide to tax calculations, click this link.

Moving on to running your payroll details, you can achieve it by following the steps below:

1. Log into your QBO account.
2. Select Payroll in the left panel, then choose Employees.
3. Click on the Run Payroll tab.
4. Choose a pay schedule, then click Continue.
5. Pick the specific employee you want to run, then click Preview Payroll.
6. Tap the Preview Payroll Details tab to view your employee summary.

You can also visit the Employee page to configure the setup for your Federal and Provincial tax withholding per worker. I recommend following the steps outlined in the Viewing Your Payroll Items section of this resource: Manage your payroll items in QuickBooks Online Payroll. You can also generate a Payroll Detail or Summary report to review everything in one place.

It's also worth noting that you can archive and access your previous payroll data for record-keeping purposes and in case you need to retrieve information later.

Please reply in the comments below if you have any further questions about your employee withholding taxes. The Community team is here to address them promptly.

Hi Irene, thanks for the response. I'm afraid I can't follow your steps after getting to the Run Payroll tab. I am not able to select the checkbox beside any employees, I believe due to them being on Auto Payroll. While I can go into each employee profile and view each of their paycheque's individually, there should be an easy way for me to view the YTD amounts paid & withheld for each employee, as well as see the breakdown between Federal and Provincial income tax withheld and the supporting calculation behind it (i.e. what % rate used, whether basic personal exemption was applied, etc.). Is there a report(s) that would give me this detail? Thanks!

You can run the Payroll details report in QuickBooks Online (QBO) to see the information you need about your employee's payroll taxes and other details. I'll help you through this to accomplish your goal promptly.

To begin, these are the steps:
 

1. On the left navigational bar, go to the Reports tab.
2. In the Search bar, enter Payroll details and then click on the result.
3. Click Customize to add the information you want to reflect on the report.
4. Once done, select the Run report button.

I've added a screenshot below for visual reference.

 

To get the tax percentage, you can run the Payroll tax and wage summary report and manually export it outside QuickBooks. This way, you can merge it with the Payroll details report and get the desired result.

On top of that, here's an article to help you keep your current report settings for future use in QBO: Save a customized report in Quickbooks Online.

We encourage you to communicate below for other questions about QuickBooks or require further assistance in generating the data you need. As always, we'll be around to extend a helping hand as soon as possible, Shayne.