Quickbooks Self Employed- Estimated Taxes not showing any tax payable

Hi there, shamilt1.

Let's make sure that you entered and categorized all of your business transactions to have an accurate sales tax.

QuickBooks will calculate self-employment taxes based on your business income, spending, allowable expenses, and tax profile. Aside from that, it also depends on:

• How much of your income is above your Personal Allowance
• Amount of income that falls within each tax band.

You'll want to review the information entered in your Tax Profile settings. Make sure to complete your tax profile on the Tax Estimate page. 

To enter the correct amount for personal allowance, go to the Gear icon and click Tax Profile. Then, proceed to the Personal allowance amount field and enter the amount. Please refer to this page for more details: How we calculate estimated tax payments.

I'll be adding articles that will also help you handle QuickBooks Self-Employed and how to categorize transactions.

• Categorise transactions in QuickBooks Self-Employed
• QuickBooks Self-Employed UK Tax Profile Set Up.

Keep me posted if you have any other questions in mind about QuickBooks Self-Employed. Take care!

Everything is entered correctly. When entered into other online tax calculators, they work it out correctly- the point I’m making is Quickbooks doesn’t.

Let me route you to the right team who can properly address your tax payable concern, shamilt1.

We'll have to identify the cause of why it shows that you don't owe any amount in the Taxes section. In order to access an account, we have to gather some personal data. I'm unable to perform this process in the Community for security reasons. 

That's why you'll have to contact our QuickBooks Self-Employed Support Team.  They can conduct extensive troubleshooting in a secure environment. Then, walk you through the steps of implementing the permanent solution.

Here's how: 

1. Go to the Assistant menu from the top bar to open the QB Assistant window.
2. Enter a brief description of the issue in the Type something field.
3. Tap the I still need a human menu to view the support options.
4. From there, choose Message an agent to start a conversation or Get a callback to speak with an agent.

You can look through this reference to learn more about managing your taxes and submitting your self-assessment form: The QuickBooks Self Assessment for Income Tax checklist.

Furthermore, this link contains topics that will walk you through how to track your mileage, handle banking-related activities, and account management, to name a few.

Feel free to visit the Community again if you have additional questions about your estimated taxes or other QBSE concerns. I'll get back to you to help and make sure this is taken care of for you. Have a great weekend.

Hi @Rasa-LilaM @MaryLandT @shamilt1 

Having read this post I took a look in my own QuickBooks Self Employed account and added a manual transaction to take me above the threshold for income tax.

This same issue occurred for me, too. The national insurance contributions section updated accordingly, but not the income tax payable.

Due to some of the ongoing niggles with QBSE I'm currently exploring another service provider. When I ran the same test there, all data updated with the correct figures.

Thanks for your reply- I was pretty confident I hadn’t done anything wrong. QBSE feels like an unfinished product to me so I might also look elsewhere for the next tax year. Its supposed to be suitable for ‘making tax digital’ but if it can’t calculate tax I don’t see how! I’d be interested to hear which other service provider you tried. 

Hi @shamilt1 

Yes, QBSE feels very much like a ‘nearly’ product at the moment. I really want it to work for me, and I do love the simplicity of doing everything when it’s working as it should, but the issues - the ones I’ve encountered and the ones I’ve read about from other people - make me lose a bit of confidence in its suitability. 

I tried one called Coconut, which wasn’t too bad but had a few basic flaws, also took a look at Apari which didn’t offer invoicing sadly, and at the moment I’m looking at FreeAgent. 

My next QBSE payment is due this time next month so I’ll make a final decision by then. 

Got this one sorted I think. In your tax settings, the ‘personal allowance’ needs to be set to ‘0’. For some reason QBSE messes up when the correct figure of £12570 is entered. I’ve played around inputting different transactions and the tax now seems to be handled correctly after changing this. 

I'm happy to hear that you're able to handle the tax payable correctly, shamilt1.

I also appreciate you sharing how you sorted it out to get the correct figure by entering different transactions.

If you have other tax-related questions, please don't hesitate to post again. The Community forum is always open to provide the information that you need.

Have a great day ahead!

Hi @shamilt1 

Thanks for the update and for sharing your findings. I've had a look at this in my own account and found that taking the same steps produces the correct data in the estimated tax box.

Hi @MaryLandT 

Why does it take users to discuss and come up with a workaround for this several days after reporting it, rather than the QB team, and why does that fix have to involve entering incorrect data in one area to get correct data in another? Why is it met with a shrug of the shoulders from QB and an attitude of "everything is OK now" rather than a commitment to fixing the issues and therefore allowing us to have correct data in both boxes?

There is also a disconnect on tax profile data between the QBSE app and viewing it via a web browser, or there certainly is for me anyway.

I thought I would make this change to my personal allowance figure via the app, but it was already set at zero even though it was correct in the web browser. I decided to enter the correct figure in the app to see what happened, but nothing changed anywhere else. When I then went back to the tax profile section of the app, the personal allowance had reverted to zero and other changes I made had also reverted.

So I tried further changes to the personal allowance within the app, navigated to other areas of the app, and then each time I went back to the tax profile the changes I made had disappeared. And before anyone asks, yes, I had pressed the big green save button.

I really do want QuickBooks Self Employed to be my accounting software, even above a program just as powerful that I'm able to access for free via my bank account, but these ongoing operational issues and poor customer support mean that I am almost certainly going to be cancelling my subscription before my next payment, which is due in the middle of November.

Please know that I hear you, and I want to help, Gareth_Davis.  

Having a reliable program is very important especially if you're doing business. So, I'd like to extend a helping hand in fixing the correct figure in your tax profile in the app. 

When the application is not fully functional, it's recommended to clear its cache files. This is a helpful initial step to resolve any sort of problems.

Follow these steps if you're using an iOS device: 

1. Select the menu at the top right and then choose Help & Feedback. 
2. Click Refresh Data and Refresh. 

For Android devices: 

1. Select the menu at the top right and choose Settings. 
2. Press Refresh Data and choose Yes.

In your Phone Settings: 

• Android - From your phone's settings, select Apps (varies by device). Choose the QuickBooks app from the list and select Storage. Select clear data. 

• iOS - From your phone's settings, select Settings, then, click on General and choose iPhone Storage. Select an app that's taking up a lot of space. To free up the storage without deleting the documents and data for the app, select Offload App. 

Once refreshed, restart your mobile phone, and check if you'll be able to make any changes in your tax profile. 

Just in case the issue persists, uninstall and reinstall the QuickBooks mobile app.

As always, you can visit our QuickBooks Community help website if you need tips and related articles in the future.  

Our Community forum is always open to help you again if you need more help with QuickBooks. Have a good one. 

@AileneA 

Thank you for your reply. 

Option one, going to Help & Feedback on an iOS device, isn’t possible on the QBSE app. There is no Help & Feedback link in the menu on QBSE. I was given that advice a few days ago by one of your colleagues, despite also telling them

that I was using the QBSE app. 

Your remaining steps have failed to solve the problem either. I am able to make changes in the app and save them, but as before, once I then return to the tax profile section those changes have disappeared. 

This problem might seem pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, but it’s another example of a service we are paying for not working as it should do and the guidance for a fix, as well as being the standard copy and paste response, also not solving the problem. 

I can see that you did everything you could, @Gareth_Davis. I want to ensure you'll be able to see the tax payable in QuickBooks Self-Employed (QBSE).

To further help you fix this, you can uninstall and reinstall your QBSE app. Then, attempt to make changes again. 

However, if the same thing happens, I highly recommend reaching out to our Customer Care team to further investigate the root cause of the issue. This way they can provide additional steps and advices on the next step you can take. Let me guide you on how:

1. In your QBSE account, select the Assistant menu.
2. Next, type a brief description of your concern in the Type something field.
3. Next, select the I still need a human option to view the support options.
4. From there, choose either Message an agent to start a conversation or Get a callback to speak with an agent.

I've also got here this helpful article for additional guidance in preparing and submitting your taxes: The QuickBooks Self Assessment for Income Tax checklist. 

Keep me posted if you have any other QuickBooks concerns. I'm always here ready to back you up. Have a great day ahead. 

Just a follow-up from this. This morning I looked at my tax and again it was wrong.

It appears the original problem has now been fixed by the Quickbooks team. So now you need to enter the correct personal allowance figure in the settings which is £12,570 for this tax year. After doing this it all works correctly (like it should’ve done in the first place!)

Going forward Quickbooks team, it would be really handy that when an update is available, instead of just putting in the notes ‘a few improvements and squashed a few bugs’, you could actually tell us what’s been fixed- in this particular case that would have made me aware that the workaround I implemented could now be reversed.  This would have saved me having to work out all over again why my figures were wrong.