The employee paid Medicare & SS are already listed as  liability accounts MC-Employee and SS- Employee, but are still showing up in the P & L reports. I think the those two liability accounts may be set up incorrectly to have information for P & L reports to draw from them, but I don't know how to change that.

They are both set up as liability accounts and are not expense accounts. They may very well be set up wrong, but I've looked at the Payroll Item Listing report and the Edit tab in the Chart of Accounts, and I can't figure it out. The director is upset because payroll tax expenses (figured at 7.65% of salaries) is double what it should be, and when we look at the line by line list of items that make up that expense it includes employee paid taxes.

@jan_k
You say " I think the those two liability accounts may be set up incorrectly to have information for P & L reports to draw from them, but I don't know how to change that."

Double check the Payroll Item in your Payroll Item List for Medicare and Social Security. It is a little confusing because although we all think of SS-Employee and SS-Employer as being two different payroll items, in the Payroll Item List they are both set up in a single set-up wizard even though they appear as two separate items in the Payroll Item list. Same for Medicare. So look at the set carefully.

On the first window you enter the Names for the Employer portion and the Employee portion of the tax.
On the 2nd window, be sure that both Account entries are LIABILITY accounts. The QB default account is "Payroll Liabilities" but it sounds like you may have set up a separate liability account for the Employee portion and another one for the Employee portion of the liability.
On the 3rd window, you enter the expense account for the Employer portion of the tax. That expense account only affects the posting of the Employer portion of the tax, since that is the only additional expense that you incur. The Employee portion is deducted from the Employee's paycheck, so that "expense" is actually reflected in your Payroll Expense account already, since it was included as a part of Gross Wages paid to the Employee.

So the Employee portion of SS and Medicare has only one account attached to it in the "set up"...the liability account that reflects the amount that was withheld from the Employee paycheck.
The Employer portion has a liability account AND an expense account associated with it since this is an additional expense that is paid by the Company.

On your P&L, you should see Gross Wages, and also the Employer portion of SS and Medicare being recorded.
On your Balance Sheet, in the liability account you should see both the Employee and Employer portions showing up....which should be double the amount that was withheld from the Employee paychecks.

Sorry to be so basic, but I hope this helps.

I am having this same problem.  So on screen 2, the company and employee should be "payroll liability"   what about the 3rd screen ' the expense' account?  What do I enter on the 3rd screen for the expense account?

@A201616$ Your own topic is here:
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://community.intuit.com/questions/1601795-payroll-expenses-and-liability-not-showing-up-on-my-p...>
Let's answer in that one place for you. Thanks.