Federal taxes are not being deducted

Good Morning ajweb,

Thank you for reaching out to the QuickBooks Community! There are some reasons why the federal wages may not be deducted which include:

• Total annual salary exceeds the salary limit.
• The gross wages of the employee's last payroll are too low.

If this isn't affecting your employee, the next step would be to double-check your employee's filing status. Here's how:

1. Go to the Payroll menu, and choose Employees.
2. Select the name of the employee.
3. Click the edit (pencil) icon beside Pay.
4. Next to the withholding section, select the Edit icon.
5. Verify the Federal Filing Status/State Filing Status. If it was set to Don't Withhold, change it to the appropriate option to correct the filing status.
   
   

Once doing this and there is still a problem, please let me know, and we can investigate this further. In the meantime, you can review these articles to learn more about employee tax exemptions and filing status:

• Employee payroll tax exemptions.

• Form W-4: Employee filing status. 

Please do not hesitate to comment below. I will be looking out to your response. Take care for now!

I need help with this as well.  The only options that I see for federal taxes are single, married filing jointly, head of household, or exempt.  None of my employees are having federal taxes withheld.  I am only 3 weeks old in this business and I need help fixing my payroll so that federal taxes are withheld.

Thanks!

Hello, JourneysKim. 

Let's log in your account on a private or incognito window. This way, we can check if this issue is caused by browser cache.

The browser uses cache and cookies to help load web pages faster on your next visit. However, this can cause odd behavior that affects the views and performance of QBO. Using a private window is the best way in identifying the issue as this doesn't save any junk files.

To open an incognito window, you can follow these keyboard shortcuts:

• Press keys: Ctrl + Shift + P (Mozilla Firefox & Microsoft Edge browser)
• Press keys: Ctrl + Shift + N (Google Chrome browser)
• Press keys: Command + Shift + N (Safari browser) 

Once you are logged in using incognito, let's ensure that your employee's filing status is not set to Don't Withhold, so they get federal withheld. Then if it works, go back to your regular browser and clear the cache to delete those temporarily stored files and browsing history. The overtime collection of data can create corruption, however, removing this should fix the issue. You can also use other supported, up-to-date browsers to roll out the possibility of a browser-related issue.    

To know how to check the status of your employee tax exemptions and filing, see this article: Employee payroll tax exemptions.

For future reference, to get the payroll information you need,  you can payroll reports to view useful information: Run Payroll Reports.

Please know that I'm ready to assist further and answer any follow-up questions about taxes. Always keep safe!