Payroll items (SS, Medicare...) are not calculated automatically.

I'm here to ensure that the Medicare and Social Security of your employees will calculate correctly, @zipswich. 

As what @BigRedConsulting, we'll need to have a payroll subscription for taxes to automatically deduct in QuickBooks. If you'd like to do your payroll manually, you can track it in QuickBooks Desktop. Just remember, you'll need to calculate and enter payroll taxes, and file your tax forms yourself. To do this, just follow the steps and details in this article: Set up manual payroll without a subscription in QuickBooks Desktop. 

Just incase you'll be using our Payroll Service and taxes are not calculating, here's the following are reasons that can lead to this issue: 

• QuickBooks is not updated or there is an internet interruption during the update.
• Using the incorrect tax table version.
• The gross wages of the employee's last payroll are too low.
• The total annual salary exceeds the salary limit.

If the same thing happens after QuickBooks and the tax table update, I recommend reviewing your employee's profile to check if the taxes are set up correctly. QuickBooks calculates the federal withholding based on several factors such as taxable wages, number of allowances/dependents, pay frequency, and filing status. Here's how to review your employees’ payroll info:

1. Navigate to the Employees menu.
2. Choose Employee Center.
3. Double-click the employee’s name, one at a time.
4. Click Payroll Info and make sure the Pay Frequency is correct.
5. Select the Taxes button.
6. Review the Filing Status and Allowances fields in the Federal tab. Make the necessary corrections.
7. Hit OK and OK again.

For other troubleshooting solutions, check out this article: Payroll items on a paycheck are not calculating or are calculating incorrectly. Feel free to browse this link here if you need help with other tasks in running payroll. It'll route you to our general payroll topics with articles.

The Community always has your back, and I'm just a post away should you ever need anything. Just leave a comment below and I'll get back to you. Have a great day ahead.

@RCV 

Did you read the user's post? He doesn't have a payroll subscription and is doing payroll manually.

@BigRedConsulting I wanted to make my question as simple and clear as possible, so I did not mention one thing that made me post this question. I initially thought no automatic calculation was by design until I added a payroll item (MA-PFML contribution) and it was calculated automatically. 

@RCV Thank you for the tips.

I followed your instructions step by step and everything looked good. Unfortunately, those fields are still not calculated. This is not a huge deal because I have been manually entering them for years. I use an ADP online calculator to get the numbers, then enter them.

I am using QB2020 with the latest updates.

As BigRed said, if you do not have a payroll subscription, it will not calculate taxes for you. As simple as that.