Edit employee and employer payroll taxes in QuickBooks Online Accountant

Learn how to edit employee and employer payroll taxes while running payroll.

As an accountant or bookkeeper, you have the ability to edit employee and employer tax amounts in QuickBooks Online Accountant while running payroll.  These include (but aren't limited to) the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP), Quebec Pension Plan (QPP), Employment Insurance (EI) and Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP). This can only be done before submitting the pay run.

Edit taxes

1. Go to the Payroll.
2. Choose Run payroll.
3. Select the Edit pencil next to the employee you want to edit. Note: You can also make changes on the Preview payroll screen.
4. Select the disclosure triangle to show Employee and Employer taxes.
5. Make the update you need and select OK.
6. Repeat for each employee that requires an edit.
7. When done, choose Preview payroll.
8. Verify the information is correct and choose Submit payroll.

Conditions and restrictions

Some conditions and restrictions apply:

• If you edit the CPP/QPP and/or EI/QPIP amount to a higher number which puts the net pay into the negative, the payroll calculator will auto-calculate the CPP or EI amount back down to a figure, which would make net pay equal to zero ($0).
• If you have normal CPP/QPP deductions of $100 per payrun and you edit the CPP/QPP to $50 for one paycheque, the subsequent payrun will continue to default to a $100 deduction.  In other words, the $50 edit to one paycheque will not stick for future ones.
• By editing CPP/QPP and EI/QPIP on the payrun, it will directly impact boxes 16 and 18 of the T4 (CPP and EI employee deductions).  It will not however impact Boxes 24 and 26 of the T4, which report pensionable and insurable earnings.
• If the business has hit their CPP/QPP and EI/QPIP maximums for the year and they attempt to make an edit to those amounts that would cause them to be higher than the YTD maximum, the payrun screen will auto-adjust the manual edit entry down to whatever the YTD max is.  It will not allow the user to enter an amount higher than the yearly max.

Please be advised the user must be a Firm user under the Manage Users section. EI and CPP can only be edited by the (maximum of 2) accountant/firm level users invited on the file.