sales tax cleanup

Hi lawrenanne1,

Thanks for reaching out to us here.  QuickBooks Desktop is a powerful program that enables you to complete your daily tasks with peace of mind.  I'd be happy to assist!

Cleaning up the books can be a rather tedious process.  When it comes to the sales tax feature, it's important to note how the the sales tax rates have been set up.  The Chart of Accounts will include accounts specific for the tax applied on sales, or paid on purchases.  Although you can merge accounts, it's best to reach out to an accounting professional or associate to ensure this is the best course of action, to prevent a negative impact on other areas of your books.  If you don't have an accountant, we can help you locate a ProAdvisor in your local area.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if you'd like additional assistance with the sales tax feature.  We'd love to work with you directly and ensure you're able to successfully complete your QuickBooks goals as soon as possible!

If any other questions come to mind, feel free to reach back out.  We'd be glad to help!

This is a QB question, not an accounting question.  The sales tax reporting has never been used; it's all been by GJ, and there are multiple GST accounts because the staff accountant has no idea how to use QB functionality and likes to parse information into tiny accounts (sometimes a single account for a single transaction) for her reporting.  I don't need to talk to an accountant, I need to know more about the best way to clean things up.  When I try to merge these accounts, they won't merge-- there's no message, the save button just doesn't work when I try.  I'm trying to understand what needs to be done in QB to merge all of these tax accounts and tax items. I also need to know if I am going to have to go back through 8 years of transactions to refile the taxes properly (PST and GST) or if there are simpler ways to do adjustment entries to remove all "unassigned" amounts (like PST cheques written to the government) and make the sales tax reports match the payable accounts.