Prior sales tax reports not showing for prior annual periods

Hello again GStewart,

It's good you've already been looking in areas like the chart of accounts to verify that the sales tax filings were actually done using the Sales Tax module in QuickBooks Desktop. Since you've already taken care of that bit, I've got a couple troubleshooting steps for you to find out why you're not able to see the reports for after 2015 in the View Prior Sales Tax Returns section of the books.

The entry in the chart of accounts should show the name of the tax agency alongside the File Sales Tax designation in the memo. If that's what you're entry looks like, it should be good to go. In those cases, it may mean then that there's data damage to your company file and you can also try re-sorting lists. Re-sorting lists help rearrange data in the program, which can iron out these kinds of issues. I'll start there.

The Re-sort lists in QuickBooks Desktop article here in Community has the steps that walk you through this process. Once you've gone through them, take a look at the View Prior Sales Tax Returns area again and see if you've now got the reports for after 2015. If you do, that's great!

If not, I recommend the steps in this article: Fix data damage on your QuickBooks Desktop company file. Data damage can cause strange behaviours with your company file or missing information, and taking these steps can help get things back in working order. There are a number of steps to try, so feel free to go through them at your leisure.

For more help with troubleshooting this and figuring out what's happened, I recommend connecting with QuickBooks Desktop support outside of Community. That way, you can have a direct conversation with a member of our team and work with them in real time to get to the bottom of this. Contact details can be found in the Intuit QuickBooks Desktop software support policies article.

Have a great week!

Thank you for responding Laura.

I looked into this a little further.

2015 was the last year that HST was collected.

For subsequent years, some ITCs were claimed in 2016 and 2017, with nil returns after that.

Could it be that no report shows if there is no taxable revenue even though we processed the HST 'File Sales Tax' in QB?

Thanks for any comments.

You're welcome. Thanks for those additional details. So long as you've selected to file the return, even if there's no taxable revenue, the program will register a report for those. When you run that kind of report, it simply shows 0s for the remittance or a blank report. Also, since you have other transactions that resulted in ITCs, you'd want to see that when working with the returns and reports. Since you're still not seeing the reports for certain periods, I recommend going through the troubleshooting I mentioned or connecting with support outside of Community if you've already done that. Support in particular can take a closer look at this with you to see what's happened.

Laura, how would re-sorting the Lists mentioned in the link potentially fix the missing report?

That's a good question. Re-sorting lists, in particular the master names lists can act as a kind of refresh for your data since the program needs to take a moment to rearrange the data. When you take these steps, it can also help with bringing missing data to light. It isn't a guaranteed solution, but it's worth a shot. Or you can simply go with the second option I highlighted for addressing potential data damage. I hope that helps clarify things a bit.