Overpayment of GST remittance. How to record this?

Hi Kaja,

Welcome to the community! The sales tax centre in QuickBooks Desktop is one of the most robust features in the program to help you accurately track every sales tax you collect and pay. I know how important it's to ensure accuracy across your books. I'll be happy to point you in the right direction with this.

If you haven't yet filed your previous quarter period in the system, recording new invoices/receipts in that period will affect your tax due amount as long as you select active sales tax codes on your transactions. I encourage you to double-check on that to make sure your transactions were saved with the proper sales tax code, which appears as active in the sales tax centre. In case you filed your tax return in the program, recording new transactions for that period will appear as exceptions in the next return. This takes automatically into account the under or overpayment so that your next tax due amount is adjusted for you. To know whether you need to make a sales tax adjustment in your case or how to record it, I'd recommend reaching out to an accountant. Accountants are incredible resources to ensure that everything's lining up correctly in your books. If you don't have an accountant, you can easily connect with one around your area on our Find-a-ProAdvisor website.

Here are a few articles you may also found useful.

• Pay sales tax
• Collect sales tax
• Process sales tax adjustment 

I hope this helps! Don't hesitate to reach out if you need anything else.

I should have added that when I filed sale tax I couldn't change the amount (to what I actually paid).

To make it simple let's say QB showed I have $400 to pay and I actually paid $470 a week before. Then I found a couple of receipts with total of $70 GST paid and I entered them in to the QB. That means I overpaid $70. Now, when I filed sales tax in QB I could not change the amount to $470 so it shows the amount paid of $400. I could change it in a bank feed somehow.

Any ideas?

Thanks for those additional details, Kaja. Based on what you've said now, it sounds like you may have filed sales tax in QuickBooks Desktop before the $70 was accounted for. Once you entered the transactions that make up the $70, those would have been added as exceptions since the filing period had been dealt with already and you cannot add new calculations to it. The exceptions would get added to the next period.

If that's the case, one thing you can consider is deleting the filed return for that sales tax period, which would open it up again and should include the $70 with the other $400. Here's another post where I guided another user through the appropriate steps to take to do delete the return: How do I unfile a sales tax return in QB Desktop (Canada)

As my colleague mentioned, this is a good opportunity to connect with an accountant. While QuickBooks Team members like us can advise you on the ways the features in the program work, we cannot advise you on how to handle your books from an accounting perspective. An accountant will be able to let you know if this is the best way to handle the situation or review your books with you to see what you may need to make changes to correct the amounts you're seeing. I highly recommend taking advantage of that option.

Wishing you the best!

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, deleting file sale tax doesn't resolve my issue. 

I deleted filed taxes in QB and then it showed me the real amount I supposed to pay. Lets stick to the sample amounts I mentioned before. So, QB showed me to pay $400 and I filed it again and paid $470 (that reflects in my bank). That means I overpaid ($70). In my thinking QB should deduct this $70 in the next GST quarter, but so far this is the difference I see when I click on File Sales Taxes (for this sales quarter). 

My only guess is to adjust it in this quarter. Now, is this legally ok to do that if it was my own mistake in counting receipts before I switched to QB? All I see in the suggestions/videos that I found that you do those adjustments if you get some sort of discount or letter from CRA that you overpaid or underpaid GST tax.

In my case it's my mistake that CRA would never know unless they audit the company and see all the receipts I paid (then they could send me refund for it)

Hope it is understandable :) 

Hello again, Kaja. I appreciate you sharing the latest on what's happening with your sales tax filing. I'm glad to hear that the numbers are lining up now and see how this would have caused some follow-up questions for you. QuickBooks Desktop itself only knows what you tell it, so it won't automatically recognize that your amount is an overpayment to the CRA. In this case, a manual entry may be in order to do whatever adjustments you need, and these questions are exactly the kinds of queries you'd want to pose to an accountant or sales tax expert.

There are a number of people versed in accounting in this Community forum that may comment here to give you some insight, but for more immediate assistance, definitely don't hesitate to connect with an accountant to sort this out. Here's our Find an Accountant page again in case you don't already have an accounting pro that you're working with.

It sounds like you may have come across them, but here are a couple of QuickBooks Desktop sales tax articles that may come in use as you continue to use the program. The first has links to a number of other sales tax articles as well.

• Set up sales tax in QuickBooks Desktop

• Process sales tax adjustment

Take care!