WA state Paid Family & Medical Leave change - when is the new rate in QBO settings? Jan 1 2023

Thanks for reaching out to us, AB206.

Intuit constantly ensures that QuickBooks complies with state laws. Our Compliance Team is now coordinating with Washington State to have this program supported as soon as possible.

For now, we're unable to provide the exact date when it will be available. You'll be notified via email at the address associated with your Intuit account if there are any updates. Rest assured that the new update will be available before January 1, 2023 and you'll receive an email at the email address associated with your account. You can also go to the Settings icon to manually check the new rate and have it added when it becomes available.

Here's how:

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Payroll Settings.
2. Next to Washington tax, select Edit ✎ to view your rates.
3. To adjust the rate, next to WA Paid Family and Medical Leave Premium ER Rates select Change or add new rate.
4. From the dropdown menu, choose the new rate and enter an Effective Date.
5. Once done, hit OK, then Done.

Refer to this article for more detailed information: Set up Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave.

You're welcome to reply if you have any other payroll questions. I'd be glad to keep helping you. Have a good day ahead!

Here it is January of 2023, and they still haven't made the change in QBO.  Just spent an hour on chat and they tell me there is no update.  All of the payrolls for this month will deduct last year's rate, and it will be a mess when it comes time to file 1st quarter.

I say yet again, Quickbooks Online is one of the worst payroll programs I have ever seen.  I strongly encourage my clients to use something else.  

Also wondering why this has not been updated. Spent the last hour discovering this is out of my control. 

I have called Intuit tech support as well on 1/3/22 regarding new 2023 rates for WA PFML. The tech. support was non-helpful. I wasted more than hour on the phone, she requested to upload WA ESD letter about new rates and, also, demanded E.I.N. to escalate the issue. She promised to solve it in one day. So far, nothing has been done nor I got any response from Intuit. As I see, Intuit developers knew about this issue for a long time and nothing has been done to sort it out. It is ridiculous.

I am relatively new to QB Online, at the same time, I have found a lot of issues with Intuit putting restrictions to do proper accounting. For example, QB calculates WA L&I taxes for salaried employees monthly based on full-time employment for any part-time salary employees. Intuit restrict to do any payroll corrections by users. I asked to fix this issue more than 6 months ago and it still undone. It is very interesting, that when I switch part-time salaried employee to hourly, QB shows correct hours on the  quarterly worksheet report and changes hours back to 480 when you switch back to salary. It is a huge glitch in software that nobody cares. When I call to do payroll corrections, majority of tech support do not know what to do.

I found some other issues, that tech support do not know how to fix and I have to do recurring adjusting J.E. to fix where I can.

Those rates came out in October, there is no reason they shouldn't have been updated in QBO.  They were in QuickBooks desktop payroll, so it's not like they didn't know about it. 

There are so many bugs and flaws in QBO. I know they want to migrate everyone to it, but it must be a better platform than what they currently have. I refuse to do it for most of my clients.  

The fact that even in the QuickBooks Accountant version of QBO, payroll liabilities cannot be adjusted is completely idiotic.  If you call for help, no one even knows what you are talking about.  I get so tired of making offsetting entries in the checking account for these taxes.  It is confusing for my clients, and then I have to reconcile for them because they don't understand the adjustments.  

I have been a fan of QuickBooks for many years, but they are alienating accounting professionals like me with their focus on making money instead of putting out a quality product.  

I hear your sentiments, @ML55. Getting back and forth isn't easy, and I understand what it's like to be in a position where you can't get the help you need. Let me share an update from one of our team about the rate change for the Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) in Washington.

As of now, we're unable to provide a turnaround time as to when the system will be updated. The Pay and File team is unable to change any system tax rates, including but not limited to WA PFML rates, CO PFML rates, MA Covid rates, state tag-along rates, and many others since hard-coded rates are not under our authority. Please be assured that we will adjust the system rates soon and that Q1-23 will be paid and filed accurately. 

If you want a convenient way to view your payroll totals, including employee taxes and contributions, we can generate a Payroll Summary report. It gives us the total payroll wages, taxes, deductions, and contributions made for employees. 

If you have any clarifications about the rate change, please don't hesitate to ask in the Reply section below. We're always available in the Community to offer help. Keep safe.

As I understood, you can't give a time frame of updating QBO to be in compliance with WA PFML premium rates for 2023. It affects numerous employers in the state. According to the letter from Employment Security Department shown in bold: "Remember: you cannot retroactively withhold premiums from employees". It means that you neglectfully put an extra burden on employers shoulder, because they will have to absorb the cost of non-deducted premiums. Are you planning to reimburse for this negligence? 

It is still not updated under the default rates as of 1/5/2023. I can reach out to QBO and check status. I do understand it is something they will need to change in their system with the new default rate and we can select the new rate from there.

With this said, once QBO adds the new rate for selection, I will back date that rate to 1/1/2023 and adjust the payroll.

You can't backdate a payroll tax rate if you have already done payroll in 2023.  It will only let you change it from that date on.  Plus, this is an employee deduction so you can't retroactively take the money from your employee. 

The company will have to pay the difference until they make the correction in QBO, and when you go to pay your taxes, the amount will be off because of it and you will have to make a separate adjustment.

You are able to make rate adjustments to payroll rate and back date as long as it is in the same tax year. If you file a quarterly with the state ideally you want to adjust within this time frame so your quarterly is accurate with the correct rates. The back date will create a next payroll adjustment of either additional due or a credit depending on the adjustment. 

Hmm, ok, I see that you can make a change within the quarter, thanks for the info about that. It won't let you if the quarter report has already been filed, so I thought it wouldn't let you at all.

You will still have the problem of not being able to deduct enough from employees checks. The rate has gone up, and if you use last year's rate you will be short.  This may not be an issue for larger companies, but for my small businesses who are struggling to pay the new $15.74 minimum wage, this is an unnecessary burden on them.  The law clearly states that you cannot retroactively deduct under collected taxes from employees.

It's just ridiculous that they couldn't make this change in the two months they had to do it.

The new rates are now available in the default of QBO. I was just able to adjust payroll for the new rate which resulted in the employee deduction of around $2 to  make up for the starting 1/1/23 period.

I am here (mouse cursor on the Effective Date dropdown box, which is highlighted green).

What do I click next to add my selection to the below Tax Rate listing?

(Clicking the Save button exits the screen WITHOUT adding my selection to the listing.)

Hi there, @LaFreniereCPA.

You can just hit save and if you're still not done modifying your State tax info you can go back anytime to Payroll settings to make changes.

Additionally, I'd like to leave this article to learn how to set up, change, pay and file WA workers' compensation (also called L&I) in QuickBooks Payroll: Set up and manage Washington (WA) workers' compensation.

If you have more questions about managing your payroll, don't hesitate to click the reply button. I'm always around to help!

Thank you for responding. As previously stated, when I click Save here, and then return to verify whether my selections were saved, it is clear that they did NOT save.

Please advise what I must do to save my new rate selections. 

I understand the importance of saving the new tax rate in QuickBooks Online (QBO), LaFreniereCPA. I'm here to share insights about this. 

We can perform some troubleshooting steps to fix this. There are times when the browser is full of frequently accessed page resources, which causes some errors or unusual responses. 

Let's start accessing your account using a different or private browser. You can use either of these shortcut keys:

• Google Chrome: Ctrl + Shift + N
• Mozilla Firefox: Ctrl + Shift + P
• Microsoft Edge: Ctrl + Shift + P
• Safari: Command + Shift + N

Once logged in, try to save it again. If it works, I recommend clearing your browser's cache. Doing so will remove the historical data and access QuickBooks with a clean slate. You can also switch to a different supported browser.

Keep your posts coming if you need more assistance in saving new tax rates in QBO. I'm always here to help. Have a great day. 

Thanks for the suggestion but I've tried it now on 3 different browsers:

Chrome, Edge and Firefox both in private windows and after clearing cache.

As far as I can tell this part of QuickBooks Online does not function correctly, and I'm not allowed to update our tax rates.

I appreciate you for performing the browser troubleshooting steps shared above, @LaFreniereCPA. 

Since the issue remains even after using different browsers, I recommend getting in touch with our Phone Support team for further investigation. They have the necessary tools to securely access your account and investigate the underlying cause of the problem. This will enable them to provide you with the appropriate guidance on how to save your new tax rates in QuickBooks.

Here's how you can contact them: 

1. Go to the Help icon in the top right-hand corner.
2. Select Search, then press the Contact Us button.
3. Enter your question in the box and hit Continue.
4. Choose the best way you'll want to reach out to us.

Make sure to review their support hours so you'll be addressed promptly. 

Moreover, if you want a convenient way to view your payroll totals, including employee taxes and contributions, we can generate a Payroll Summary report. It gives us the total payroll wages, taxes, deductions, and contributions made for employees. 

Keep us posted about the result. If you have follow-up questions about sales tax rates or other QuickBooks-related concerns, never hesitate to ask below. The Community is always around to help.

‎My last update January 26, 2023 and it was resolved, I know I am receiving more comments in 2024 on this but please remember this is a year old post.

This is a system BUG. I had the same thing. Try to save another option even if it is not correct then go right back again to save your option and it will save. My correct option would also not save yesterday preventing me to run payroll. Try to save another selection, it will save then go back again and save the CORRECT selection and that should do it! There was also a misinformative email from QBO that rates were .80 and went down they were never .80 for WA state. 

How to fix the system bug some are experiencing preventing you from saving Employee: 71.43%, Employer: 0 % as of 1/1/2024

Step 1:  Select Employee: 71.43%, Employer: 28.57 % as of 1/1/2024 and SAVE THIS RATE

Step 2:  Go back and Select Employee: 71.43%, Employer: 0 % as of 1/1/2024 and SAVE

That should work. There is a bug which prevents some users from directly saving Employee: 71.43%, Employer: 0 % for 1/1/2024.