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Understand federal forms and tax payments for 941, 944, 943, and 940

by Intuit•373• Updated 2 weeks ago

If your business has employees, you’ll need to file federal payroll forms. The IRS notice tells you which form or forms you need to file.

Non-agricultural businesses file either Form 941 or Form 944, based on how much they owe in taxes. Agricultural businesses file Form 944. Businesses subject to Federal Unemployment (FUTA) taxes also file Form 940.

We support Forms 940, 941, and 940 in all QuickBooks Online Payroll and QuickBooks Desktop Payroll products.
We support Form 943 for both manual and automated tax options in QuickBooks Online Payroll Core, QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium or QuickBooks Online Payroll Elite. We support manual filing for Form 943 in QuickBooks Desktop Payroll Enhanced, but don’t support it in QuickBooks Desktop Payroll Assisted.

What are the federal forms?

What's Form 941?

Most businesses use Form 941. If you run a non-agricultural business that owes more than $1,000 in total federal taxes (Federal Withholding, Social Security, and Medicare), you’ll file Form 941 with the IRS quarterly.

For form 941, the lookback period for Tax Year 2023 is July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022.

What’s Form 943?

If you run an agricultural business, you’ll file Form 943 annually. You may also need to file a Form 943 or 944, depending on your business. Select Form 943 when you set up payroll, or from the Federal tax menu in Payroll Settings.

This form is available to both Automate taxes and forms On or Off options.
We don’t support filing both a 943 and a 941 or 944. We can only file one federal tax form per business.
We don’t support non-cash/commodity wage reporting on the 943.

For form 943, the lookback period for Tax Year 2023 is January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021.

Filing Form 943 in Oregon

In Oregon, the state accepts the quarterly form OR-OQ from agricultural businesses. You won’t need to to also file annual forms. We support the OR-OQ form, which reports Withholding, Unemployment, STT, TriMet, LTD, and PFML.

If you prefer to file the annual OR-WA and OR-STT-A forms, turn off automate taxes and forms in QuickBooks Online and file these forms manually. You’ll also need to manually file quarterly form OR-OQ outside of QuickBooks to report only Unemployment, TriMet, LTD, and PFML.

What’s Form 944?

Form 944 is required for non-agricultural businesses that owe $1,000 or less in total federal taxes (Federal Withholding, Social Security, and Medicare). The IRS notifies you by letter if you’re required to file this form instead of the 941. You’ll file this form with the IRS annually.

For form 944, the lookback period for Tax Year 2023 is July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022.

Deposit guidelines

Deposit schedule	Threshold for each deposit schedule
Semi-Weekly	Businesses who reported more than $50,000 in taxes during the lookback period
Monthly	Businesses who reported less than $50,000 in taxes during the lookback period
Annually (Forms 943 or 944 only)	Businesses who reported less than $2,500 during the lookback period.

Change your form filing in your payroll product

If you need to change the form you file, see Change your deposit and filing schedule.