How do I unfile a sales tax return in QB Desktop (Canada)

Hello sparky263,

It's great to hear that you're keeping on top of your books and making sure all your numbers are lining up. When things aren't quite making sense, retracing your steps and going through the information is the solution for finding where things may have gone wrong. QuickBooks Desktop gives you the freedom to make changes to your information to try to resolve situations like this and undoing sales tax filings to reassess your numbers can help. I'll walk you through it.

Where you're looking for the unfile option definitely makes sense, but QuickBooks Desktop doesnt' provide an undo button for sales tax. Don't worry! It's still possible to undo the filing and I'll show you how.

When you want to undo a sales tax filing, there are two important steps in the order I'm giving them below.

1. Deleting any sales tax payments or refunds associated with the filing.
2. Deleting the journal entry that was created when you completed the filing process.

There are a few ways to do these things, such as combing through your entries in the transaction windows (such as the journal entry creation window) or by going directly to the chart of accounts. I'll show you how to go through the chart of accounts. Start by opening it up through the Company menu or by pressing CTRL + A on your keyboard as a shortcut.

For your payment or refund, you'll want to go to the bank account in the chart of accounts where the money was paid from or deposited. Double-click the account you need and find the payment or refund transaction. Click the transaction and either right click and choose Delete or go to the Edit menu and choose Delete. You may also be able to go through the Vendor Centre, choose the name of the sales tax agency from the vendor list, and delete the transaction from the Transactions list.

Next, open the account register for the sales tax payable account in the chart of accounts. Here are the steps.

1. In the chart of accounts, double-click to open the sales tax payable account in question.
2. Find and select the general journal entry created by the system for the return.
3. Go to the Edit menu and choose Delete General Journal or right click and choose Delete General Journal.
4. Read the warning that comes up and click Continue to undo the filing.

Take these steps with the sales tax filings you need to get back to where the numbers make sense. Once complete, you'll be able to go back to Sales Tax, File Sales Tax and be good to go through the filing process again.

To get assistance with any of these steps, you can consider getting in touch with QuickBooks Desktop's support team. Check out the following link to learn about support: Intuit QuickBooks Desktop software support policies

I'm here if you have more questions!

Different person. Same question:

I have done everything above. When I try to re-file my November 2022 HST the following error message pops up: "You cannot file sales tax for a period that has already been filed".

Good evening EdNor,

Thanks for joining in on this thread. If you have tried the steps provided above and are still unable to re-file taxes, I recommend reaching out to the support team outside of the Community. They'll have the ability to verify your account details in a secure setting, as well as view your screen to better assist you. You can reach them by following the method in this link.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.