QuickBooks Online: How do I adjust Payroll Tax Liabilities so that they match what the State is showing due?

Ok, thank you for your help.

I have just spent 1 1/2 hours on the phone with a QBO Payroll "Specialist" who had no idea how to fix this issue.  As a nonprofit we are totally exempt from FUTA.  Since QBO has many many non profits one would think that they would make this an easy fix.  I now have a case number and am waiting for someone to call me back.

This is really ridiculous.

Did you ever get a response from QB regarding this question?  I have the same type of issue and need to adjust liabilities for unemployment tax.  Can it be done?  I read where there is no fix for this in QB online.

Hi there, @JN01.

I want to make surJN01.e you can adjust the liabilities for your unemployment tax in QuickBooks Online (QBO), and I'd like to redirect you to the best support group available to get this addressed right away.

Adjusting payroll liabilities in QBO can be done by our QuickBooks Payroll Support Team. I'd like you to reach out to them so they'll be able to help you adjust the liabilities for your unemployment tax manually. To contact them, you can follow the steps below:

1. Sign in to your QuickBooks Online account.
2. Click the Help button.
3. In the QuickBooks Assistance chatbox, select Talk to a human and choose I still need a human.
4. Select Contact Us.

You can also check out this article for another way of reaching out to our support team and its support hours: QuickBooks Online Support.

You might want to run payroll reports in QBO. This will help you view useful information about your business, payroll taxes, and employees.

Please know that I'm just a reply away if you have any concerns about payroll in QBO. Wishing you all the best, @JN01.

I have the same issue because I have a few clients who have to pay workers comp on non-employees. The only solution I have found is changing all my reporting to manual and doing a journal entry to correct the amount due. This process confuses my customers when they reconcile the bank account because there will be two transactions for one withdrawal. Unfortunately, it is the only way to post the correct amount into the bank account. Therefore, using QBO payroll has become more complicated, and I am considering moving all of my clients away from it.

This doesn't make sense, and this is something we have been able to do with QuickBooks desktop. As accounting professionals, we should be able to adjust amounts due. I am starting to think that QuickBooks online is not a solution.

I completely agree with the comments. I am experiencing the similar issues with adjusting payroll tax liability. Quickbooks tech support completely messed up  Federal Unemployment tax settings when they tried to change rate from 6% to 0.6% and screwed State unemployment tax settings as well. For almost a month they still have not fixed it and stopped responding for the case. I had to produce and file quarterly tax reports manually and now have to do some sort of adjusting J.E. to fix liabilities.

It is ridiculous that payroll taxes cannot be adjusted in the online but you can in desktop. The state adjusted the unemployment tax in the middle of the quarter so the taxes due were lower than what is in Quickbooks. Now it is telling me I am late, I will owe penalties and I cannot adjust it. I have filed and paid these taxes already. Now I want Quickbooks to match. 

I have figured out a way to do this. Go to Prior Tax History. Click on the green button "Add Payment". I included a screenshot of the next screen. Create Prior Tax Payment choose your tax type and your period dates. I didn't put in a check number, but I did notes and payment date. Then put in your amount next to the tax item. I have checked this and it does not show up under the bank register or under the vendor. It removed the tax due from my upcoming tax payments list. 

I too have an issue to where an overpayment was made on the state site so I want to adjust the payment in QB to be the actual payment made not what was due.  Am not finding anything to change this.  

If anyone can help, I'd be very grateful!

QB payroll support was zero help.  They didn't understand what I was talking about at first and then once (I think) they figured it out, they said they didn't know how to fix it.  

Thank you in advance.

Thanks for joining this thread, MESAK26.

I want to make sure you're able to adjust the tax payment in your QuickBooks Online account. 

To get this taken care of as quickly as possible, I do recommend reaching out to the QBO Payroll Support Team once more. Agents have the necessary tools to take a more in depth look at your account details, correct certain transactions on their side, and/or escalate the issue further if need be. 

The following linked article provides the steps to get in touch with the team: QuickBooks Online Support

Please don't hesitate to reach back out if you have any other questions. Take care!

QBO payroll tax support is useless and the software has too many glitches. I have called numerous times to tech support and they still have not fixed issue with FUTA taxation. They so incompetent asking for Publication 15 that should be a core of PR taxation and even ask to provide tax document from Federal tax authority.

While they worked on fixing FUTA taxation (I commented few months ago), they screwed up state unemployment putting few employees as exempt form the state tax. Also, the software calculate workers compensation insurance for part-time salary employees as they work full-time even it clearly showing specific amount of hours worked per week. It looks like QBO keeps clients hostages by limiting their ability to manage taxation according to Federal and Local authorities and do not have knowledgeable tech support to fix the issues created by poor developed product.

It looks like, accountants have been struggling to keep books in order and provide correct reporting.to tax authorities.

Thank you so much for sharing.  Sadly, I cannot see your screen shot (don't know if it's my computer or QBO keeping us from seeing it), but I appreciate your insight.  It is so frustrating that QBO has tied the hands of the accountants who should be able to adjust these things.  Desktop payroll is so much better.  And I agree, when you do get on the line with someone, 85% of the time you know more than they do.  So frustrating.

Any chance you figured this out? Im somewhat newer to QBO, always had desktop and the payrol liability adjustment were super easy to do. No liability payments in QBO are adding correctly and it's IMPOSSIBLE to do an adjustment. Like mentioned, quickbooks support has no idea how to fix it and always says their "back end payroll team" needs to fix it and opens a ticket with me and NEVER responds! This is so frustrating!

I understand this isn't an easy process for you, @heatherhd14. I'll direct you to the right support who can help you further with Payroll Tax Liability adjustments.

We appreciate you keeping up with your liability payments. While we're in a public forum and unable to see your payroll information, I recommend contacting our Payroll Support. They can access your account in a safer environment and can help with the adjustments. Here's how to contact support:

1. Log in to your QuickBooks Online account.
2. Click on Help (?).
3. Choose Contact Us.
4. Type in your concern then hit Let's talk.
5. Select a way to connect with us:
   • Start a chat
   • Get a callback 
   • Ask the community

If you want to chat with a specialist, choose your product from the links below:

• QuickBooks Online Payroll Core
• QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium
• QuickBooks Online Payroll Elite

Additionally, please note the business hours to make sure they're available for assistance.

Once everything is good, browse this guide on how to keep track and manage payroll transactions in QBO: Run and customize payroll reports in QuickBooks Online Payroll.

You can always reply to this thread for more help regarding payroll or QuickBooks. We're available 24/7 to assist. Take care!

Mich, thanks for the response but you must not be reading what everyone is complaining about and what I said in my message. I have contacted QB support and they NEVER know what to do. 

I don't understand why payroll liability adjustments aren't an option in QBO but are on desktop. QB wouldn't have nearly as many people complaining. 

Hi there, @heatherhd14.

I understand how significant and urgent your concern is. Please know that as much as I'd like to help you get this sorted as fast as possible. Know that you'll need to contact our QuickBooks Online Payroll Customer Care Team. This way, they can check your account and apply the adjustment on your behalf. To contact, these are the steps:

1. Sign in to your QuickBooks Online company.
2. Go to Help (?).
3. Select Contact Us.
4. Enter your concern, then select Let's talk.
5. Choose a way to connect with us:

• Start a chat with a support expert.
• Get a callback from the next available expert.

In addition, here's an article to help you in wrapping up this year's books in QBO: Year-end guide for QuickBooks Online.

You can also check this page to learn more about closing books: Close your books in QuickBooks Online.

I'll be here if you need further assistance with this or if you have any questions related to QuickBooks. Feel free to post here again. Take care!

I contacted QBO tech support three times in a week. First two tech experts had been completely useless and I wasted few hours of my time. I spent 3.5 hours yesterday. There was some progress and tech support agent was able to adjust some tax liability for FUTA  and WA WC taxes, at the same time she could not do payroll correction for over deducted WA WC due to issue with improper calculation WA WC taxes for part-time salary employees. Also, she was not able to delete some payroll adjustments that were created by improperly setup of WA WC rates. She promised to pass to others who can do it in a week. The same promise I received from another tech support agent that I talked last week. It looks like QB developers created such restrictions that even tech support can not delete them, even there is an option to delete; at the same time when you click to delete, the popup message states that need to contact tech support to delete. It is non sense. I am wondering when QBO will allow users to do their accounting job properly..

Hi there, @ML55.

I can definitely see how this problem may have inconvenienced you a lot. We wanted to make this task easier for you, and make sure we can provide the resolution you need.

I'm sure you understand that in this forum we have to be careful to protect your account information and all our customer's account details. We already submitted a formal complaint to our Payroll Team. They will verify all the details of your concern to give you the best option to resolve your concern and reach out in the coming days for more information. 

Thanks again for taking the time to talk with us. You can always come back to the community for other program concerns.

Hello, As I expected, nobody contacted me back from tech. support nor fixed the issues with deleting payroll adjustments made by QBO in error nor do payroll corrections, that should be allowed to be done by users in the same way as QuickBooks Desktop version allows .

The tech support is mostly useless and do not know how to unscramble the poor development of QBO software.

I have been promised twice by so named "experts" of tech support to fix the issues in a week by other pros, because  "the experts" could not fix on their own and refused to pass to higher tier of tech supports who could do it on the spot.

How hard is it for Qbooks to figure this problem out. NC SUI went up and we cannot calculate it thought QB. Then they expect you to pay more for the monthly employee fee and $500.00 for new 2023? I think not. They don't like to work with small business's. 

I had wasted another three hours with tech support on the phone. Now it is the time to file payroll quarterly reports and QBO pulled correct tax form for WA WC filing; at the same time the pay amount is substantially higher than actual tax liability. It happened partially due to improper tax rate settings at the beginning of the year and, also, due improper tax calculations for part-time salary employee. In addition, QBO  pulled from nowhere some over payment of taxes from 1st quarter 2021. Tech support agent could not solved any of these issues. He helped to submit payroll correction form for last quarter, that supposed to be completed within the next 40-60 days (according to email I received). And he was not able to resolve the issue with the tax over payment for 2021, that suddenly popped up this year at no reason.

I am wondering when Intuit changes its approach to the development of QBO to make it user friendly allowing accountants to do their jobs accordingly. Current design creates the issues that even tech support can not solve in timely manner.

Going back to 940 tax liability, the software is not design to calculate it according to IRS Publication 15, because it calculates exempt corporate officers 940 tax based on 6% without taking in consideration credit for all other employees who are subject to state unemployment taxes according to Instruction to Form 940 line 10... In my opinion,Q.B.O. should use worksheet for Line 10 to calculate FUTA tax liability for exempt corporate officer after each payroll and adjust FUTA tax liability as soon as credit for exempt officer. Therefore it overstate tax liability for small businesses pushing to pay taxes even it is not necessary.. Maybe, it will be reasonable to let users determine tax rate for FUTA as it is designed in desktop version.

I can't believe that in 2023, these issues still exist!! While I was waiting the 40-60 days for someone at QB to enter a payroll tax correction from the flawed migration and manual entry of payroll history (after numerous 3-hour calls to support), I had to manually calculate my monthly 941, state income w/h, and other quarterly payroll taxes.  I paid them outside of QB, and of course I calculated them incorrectly.  I'm now trying to enter them into QB and I can't enter the amounts that I paid.  I wish I could adjust the liabilities, b/c I don't have 3 hours to sit on the phone trying to explain what i need done and then waiting another 40-60 days for someone to correct it.  Meanwhile I have no idea what my bank balance is b/c I can't enter these payments.  To top it off, I do this at night b/c it's my second job, and of course QB support is not available nights.  SO DISAPPOINTING!!! I wish they worked out all the bugs before discontinuing Desktop version and forcing the switchover to online.  

Unfortunately, this only solves part of the problem, as I DO need it to post to my check/bank register.