WA Paid Family and Medical Leave payroll items are not working properly

Thanks for reaching out to us here in the Community, @kimatwork.

I appreciate you for providing the complete details of your concern. I'm here to help make sure that the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave deduction will calculate correctly when running payroll in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT).

To start off, let's try to run Payroll Updates in your QBDT. These updates will provide the most current and accurate rates and calculations for supported state and federal tax tables, payroll tax forms and e-file and payment options. Here's how:

1. Go to Employees menu at the top, then pick Get Payroll Updates on the drop-down.
2. Select Download Entire Payroll Update, then click the Update button.

Once done, create a dummy paycheck with the same date to see if the deduction is now calculating correctly. For your reference, you may also check out these articles for more information:

• Intuit QuickBooks Desktop Payroll News & Updates.
• Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave (New Tax 2019).

That should do it! But if you're still getting the same results, please let me know so I can get back to you right away. I want to make sure this is fix. Take care and have a good one.

I have the same issue with the calculation for the WA paid Family and Medical Leave act.  My test employee's gross wages are $1,923.08 and the amount for the employee piece should be $4.87 ($1,923.08 x .4% x .6333).  I am also seeing a result of 2 cents calculated for this withholding.

I did the payroll update again and am using tax table 21901 and the result is 2 cents again.

I have this employee and company tax on the payroll item list with no value, but the tax label is loaded for each employee and for my first employee I used the .25332% (.4% x .6333) for the employee piece of the tax.  I didn't try the employee piece because we do not need to pay the employer portion.

Please look into this ASAP as time is running short to make this work.

Thanks,

Jim

I have experienced the same problem this morning.  Very similar circumstances and also had a withholding result of 2 cents for the WA Family And Medical Leave withholding amount for an employee of ours (using a test payroll transaction).

There is an obvious problem as I used the .4% x .6333 or .25332% for this employee against a base of $1,923.08 and the result should have been $4.87.

Please relook at this ASAP as I need to do a 2019 payroll at the end of this week.

Thanks,

Jim

Hello there, @jgforbes.

Thanks for joining this thread and for trying over the steps that I've provided.

Since you're still having the same issue after running payroll updates, I'd suggest reaching out to our Payroll Support Team. They have the tools such as screen-sharing that can help double check why WA Paid Family and Medical Leave deduction is not calculating correctly.

Here's how to reach them:

1. Go to http://payroll.intuit.com/support/contact/.
2. Select your Payroll Subscription type.
3. Choose a topic.
4. Click on the View Contact Info button to get their contact number.

Please let me know how it goes after contacting them. Should you have any follow-up questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment below. I'm always here to help. Take care always!

I did call Intuit payroll and a nice man named Albert helped me out.  It turns out that the software download that includes the WA paid Family and Medical Leave withholding item already includes the .4% rate applied against the gross wages and is embedded in the software set-up.  

The 0.4% rate is not visible, thus it is not obvious what the issue was.  All you do is put 63.33% in the employee piece of the withholding and leave the employer piece blank (because we have fewer than 50 employees).  These amounts are multiplied by the embedded 0.4 % and now yield the correct answer for both the employee and employer amounts when I run a mock 2019 paycheck for one of my employees.

Jim

Welcome back to the QuickBooks Community, Jgforbes.

Thanks for letting me know about the steps you performed with Albert and our Technical Support Team.

The additional information will surely help a lot of customers who are also having issues with the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave’s calculation.

To help you stay on top of the year-end’s taxes and forms, I’m adding a link that can assist in preparing the payroll data: Year End Checklist.

If you have any questions working in the program, feel free to reach out to me. Please know that the Community is a one-stop for help in QuickBooks.

Thanks for getting back to me, @kimatwork.

I'm glad to know that you already figured it out! As what my colleague @Rasa-LilaM mentioned, this kind of response will definitely help other customers who are also having the same issue.

Thanks for being a part of our QuickBooks family. You're always welcome to post here in the Community if you have any other concerns. Take care and have a great rest of the week!

I'm running a payroll for a client who pays out Tips...tips are not to be included in the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave calculation.  You will want to edit any payroll item with Tax Tracking as Reported Tips and uncheck the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave for Company AND Employee. According to the ESD, "wages are generally referred to as gross wages without tips".  See their site for further information.  Hope everyone who needs this tidbit, finds it.  I also hope Intuit can correct this in an update.

I don't see where I'm supposed to enter this 63%??  In my Payroll Item list I see the .4% that auto set up. When I go into each employee's "file", I click on Taxes... and in the "Other" tab I see the listing for WA - Paid Family Med Leave Emp and WA - Paid Family Ed Leave Co but there is no where to enter percentages.  Please help!

Hello there, @Jenjen.

Thank you for posting in the Community. Allow me to help and share some information about updating the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave payroll items rate.

You're on the right track on updating the payroll item's rate. Currently, you can only enter the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave percentage on the employee's profile or on the Payroll Setup. 

To fix this, let's start with updating the tax table in QuickBooks. Unexpected behavior like this can be fixed by downloading the latest tax table update.

Here's how: 

1. From the Employees menu, select Get Payroll Updates. 
2. Select Download entire payroll update.
3. Click the Update button.
4. Click OK to confirm. 

After that, let's try to enter the correct rate. The Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave article contain additional information about this, as well as steps and screenshots for adding the payroll item's percentage. Just click the Desktop Payroll drop-down on the article and select Enter the percentage of the premium you and the employee will pay to see the options.

If you get the same result, feel free to reach out to our Payroll Support. They have extra tools that can pull up your account securely and can generate a screen sharing tool for further assistance.

Here's how: 

1. Go to http://payroll.intuit.com/support/contact/.
2. Select your Payroll Subscription type.
3. Click Payroll.
4. Click on the View Contact Info button to get their contact number.

That should point you in the right direction today.

Stay in touch if you have any other questions about updating the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave payroll items. I'll be happy to help you out. 

I too am having difficulty with Tips. QB's is calculating the .004 with tips included. I tried what you said and edited the Payroll Tips item by unchecking the two new line items under "taxes" but upon clicking the mouse to uncheck a window immediately appears that reads "You may not change the taxability of this payroll item." Did you not have this same issue @kimatwork?

Maybe the sequence of how I did it was different.  I went to the WA - Paid Fam Med Leave Emp. in the Payroll Item List and unchecked the Tips on the Taxable Compensation window.  And then I went to the Tips item and it should be unchecked, but double check for yourself that it worked.  Hope that works...Kim

@kimatwork I appreciate the quick response. I have been on the phone with support for an hour and a half and we haven't been able to figure this out. It seems to be working differently for you that it is me. See the attached screenshot of what error message I get when I do what you explained. 

Really sorry to hear that...hope they can figure it out.  :(

Hello there, @JordanSchmidt34 and @kimatwork.

Thank you for posting your experience in the Community. I'd be happy to help share some information about editing the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave payroll items for employees with tips. 

You're actually on the right path in editing the payroll items from the list. Since you get this warning, what we can do for now is to get the amount of the difference to reimburse the employee. 

Let me walk you through how: 

1. Create a Payroll Summary report for the time period you have already paid.
2. Export the report to Excel.
3. Uncheck the tips payroll items from the list. 
4. Run a Payroll Checkup tool to identify tax amount discrepancies and will offer a suggestion on how to fix the problem.
5. Create an additional Payroll Summary report for the same dates as above, then export the report to Excel.
6. Compare the amounts for the WA – Paid Fam Med Leave Emp.  
7. The difference is the amount to reimburse the employee.

If you need to reach out for more help, our phone agents can do screen sharing and guide you through the step-by-step process. They can also check the updates in your case about this issue. 

Here's how:

1. Go to http://payroll.intuit.com/support/contact/.
2. Select your Payroll Subscription type.
3. Choose a topic.
4. Click on the View Contact Info button to get their contact number.

That should point you in the right direction today.

If you've got other questions in mind about QuickBooks Desktop Payroll, feel free to leave a reply below. I'll be glad to assist you in the future.

Shouldn't you put 33.33, not 63.33 in employee's portion?

Thanks for joining us on this thread, @fireandwater.

I'm here to share some information about the new employee and employer rate for the Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave tax update.

As per the latest tax update of the WA Paid Family and Medical Leave, starting January 1, 2019, the new employee portion rate is now 63% (of 0.4% premium). For more information, you can visit these articles:

• Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave (New Tax 2019).
• https://www.paidleave.wa.gov/employers.

That should answer your concern for today. Please don't hesitate to leave a comment below if you have any follow-up questions. I'm always here to help. Have a great day!

NOT true!  Once I enter the employee's share of Fam Leave at 63.33%, the calculation comes close but does NOT compute the correct amount of the deduction from gross pay amount.  Example:  The deduction based on a gross pay amount of $1440 should be (0.4% x 63.33% x 1440 =$3.64) and QB Payroll computes a deduction of $5.59.  PLEASE & PLEASE get this corrected ASAP.   This should be an extremely easy computation for QB !!   And whoever programmed this should be abe to "quickly" find the error and correct it.   

Hello there, @tonyl0404.

Thank you for joining the Community. I'd be happy to help share some troubleshooting steps to ensure the tax calculation on the paycheck is correct. 

To start, let's make sure the tax table is updated to the latest release. It's is possible that the tax table is not downloaded successfully that's why it's not calculating the taxes correctly.

Next, let's try to recreate the paycheck. Please verify if the name of the employee is highlighted with a yellow background in the Enter Payroll Information window. This will also affect the tax calculations.

It shows as yellow if you saved a paycheck before editing an employee's information or tax rates. To fix this, you need to undo the changes you've made to an employee's paycheck.

Finally, when you recreate the paycheck, make sure that there are no other earnings items that'll add to the gross pay amount. 

For additional help, feel free to reach out to our Payroll Support. They can check your account and run the screen sharing tool to assist you further.

Here's how you can reach them:

1. Go to http://payroll.intuit.com/support/contact/.
2. Select your Payroll Subscription type.
3. Click Payroll.
4. Click on the View Contact Info button to get their contact number.

That should do it.

Drop me a comment below if you have any other questions about processing payroll. I'll be happy to help you further.

I too thought the new WA PFML was not working correctly in my Quickbooks desktop version. However, if you did not have this set up in time for you very first payroll that was paid in 2019 the program automatically also calculates the tax amount that should have been withheld last time so that your YTD tax with-holdings are accurate and the current deduction 'catches up' to the correct YTD amount. For me I am doing my second payroll of 2019 and I did not have the new tax set up correctly and withheld on our first payroll. The deduction this time was therefore off of YTD wages including the current payroll so that I am now caught up. The calculation was accurate after all. We are a company of less than 50 employees so the calculation is: GROSS WAGES x .004 (.4%) x .63 (63%). The .4% is automatically set-up/calculated via the Payroll Items list. The 63% is loaded individually on each employees's payroll tax deductions under the 'other' tab. Hope this helps.

It's a pleasure to see you here in the Community, Sweepa.

I appreciate you joining the thread and sharing your amazing insight about how QuickBooks handles your payroll.

You are correct. Once you've set up the payroll correctly before your next payroll run, QuickBooks will help you catch up to your Year-To-Date amounts to make sure everything is correct. It seems like you have a grasp on the process, but let me include these helpful articles for the benefit of all:

• Payroll Setup Interview
• New Payroll Setup Interview

Keep in touch with me here if there's anything else you need, or if there's anything else you'd like to share. Thanks for dropping by, wishing you and your business the best.

Question - I had already gone through and put what I thought was the correct rate on each employee setup. Everyone's PFML deduction came out to zero (clearly incorrect).

Now I see what I was doing wrong, and I need to enter the percentage of the total tax due as the deduction amount. Does that mean I need to pull up each employee and make the change?

I've got 5 companies to do payroll for, total of about 100 employees ... so hoping there is a way to update everyone at once.

Hi, yes, you are correct...you have to go into each employee profile and make the change.  Dumbest thing ever, right?!?  I also have a lot of companies and it's painful...I hope they fix it :)

Kim