Hello, m9437.
I appreciate all the details you added regarding the federal tax issue. I'll shed some light about it and find out what's preventing QuickBooks from calculating the tax.
QuickBooks Desktop Payroll uses the wage bracket table to calculate the federal taxes. Depending on how much they earn per payroll, you might want to check where they fall under the bracket.
You can check this IRS publication about the wage bracket calculations: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15t.pdf.
Another thing to look out for is the gross wage. It's likely that the wages are too low for QuickBooks to calculate the tax. This is normal, provided that the employee's tax setup and hours worked are correct.
In addition, pre-tax deductions can affect how the federal taxes are calculated.
This article can explain more about how QuickBooks calculates the taxes: How QuickBooks calculates payroll taxes.
After getting the information on the federal taxes, I'm sure you have other tasks to complete. If you need a guide or two, our articles can definitely help you out.
I'm willing to share a thing or two if you need help completing your tasks in QuickBooks. Just post the details here and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
