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December 27, 2018
Question

Multi-state Withholding

  • December 27, 2018
  • 36 replies
  • 152 views

I'm having a difficult time getting a clear answer from Quickbooks as to what payroll service I need for multi-state withholding.  Our service business has employees that work in Kansas and Missouri and are required to withhold tax in each when working in those states.  An employee may work 35 hours in kansas and 5 in Missouri just within one week.  I am not seeing ANY payroll service that is capable of handling this situation.  Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

36 replies

December 27, 2018

Unfortunately there is no Intuit payroll service that can properly handle this - no matter what support says.

 

It's been a common request for 20 years.

April 26, 2019

I too, am grappling with this issue. I live on the border of WA and OR, with WA having no income tax, and Oregon having income tax and requiring withholding for employees that earn more than a couple thousand dollars throughout a year in Oregon. We have many jobs (construction) in Oregon, and will continue to do so. I even called ADP, and their basic service also does not offer multi-state payroll. To get that level of service with ADP you must have at least 25 employees. We have just 2 employees. All is not lost, however: After an Intuit "Payroll expert" flatly told me that NO QB Payroll service accommodates multi-state payroll, I closed that chat and proceeded to set it up as follows: The work-around solution is to simply set up 2 employees of the same name. You will have to differentiate them as follows (add a code enclosed with [for example in my case {OR}] in the last name. Put the full real name in the Legal Name field. Simply enter the hours for each state in the applicable employee. The employee will receive 2 paychecks per pay period that they work in two (or more) states. At the end of the year they receive a W-2 for each state they worked in. Dang, I should bill Intuit a fat consulting fee for this advice on how to use their product to accomplish something that "people have been asking for for 20 years." :-)

May 1, 2019

Thanks for your answer -- creativity is appreciated. For how long have you been managing it that way? are there any other issues or problems to watch for?

November 5, 2019

Does anyone know for sure if Quickbooks Online supports multi state employees?

Angelyn_T
Moderator
November 5, 2019

Thank you for joining the thread, @cmrapp.

 

Yes, QuickBooks Online (QBO) supports multi-state employment. However, consulting with an accountant or a tax professional is highly recommended to help set up the employees correctly so QuickBooks will calculate and deduct taxes accordingly.

 

Also, you can contact our QBO Support Team with regards to your payroll questions. From the Help menu, select Contact us to connect to a payroll representative.

 

This article is another great resource to know more about multi-state employment payroll situations in QBO: About multistate employment payroll situations.

 

Drop a post if you have any other concerns and clarifications, I'm always here to help however I can. Wishing you continued success!

October 24, 2023

I have handled our multiple state employees as listed above. All employees are set up twice but the second one has {OR} after their name. I just manually combine the two at the end of the year for W-2 reporting.

Since the upgrade to Enterprise 2022 any employee with {} after their name cannot receive a paystub by email. I have exhausted support with several attempts to fix this. I was told to remove the {}. If I do this, does anyone have a suggestion how to represent an employee twice? They need to get their paystubs. 

Any suggestions are welcome!

Thank you,

clake


Yes, it used to work to just put the state abbreviation after their name in each record (WA for the Washington record, OR for the Oregon record etc.). Now because of the new restrictions, you cannot create or update records for multiple states.