how to modify a sales tax liability report (remove inactive tax items)

Good day, TomOs.

In QuickBooks Desktop, the inactive sales tax items will still appear on the reports. This is to make sure that the data is still intact. 

Although, I have workarounds for you. First, when you filter the report, you can select all those active items only. Here’s how:

1. Click the Customize Report button.
2. On the Filter tab, search Item. 
3. On the Item drop-down, select the Multiple Items.
4. Check the active items on the pop-up. Then, click OK.

Another workaround is to export it to excel. After running the report, click the Excel button. Once converted, you can remove the inactive ones.

In addition, let's make sure to set the correct reporting date. If they are inactive and have no transactions on specific dates, it won't show on the reports. For instance, if there's no transaction for this week for that sales tax item, it won't reflect for this week's report.

You can check this article to know more about sales tax reports.

The QuickBooks Community is always here if you have other concerns.

Thanks for the response. I had already tried that but it deletes the sales amount for each of the active items when you do that and only reports the tax collected. I need both sets. I also tried amounts greater than zero but that didn't work either. The items I wanted to remove from the report have been inactive for over 12 years.  I guess I will just live with it as I didn't want to take the extra steps of exporting and modifying. I was hoping to just fix the report in QB. Thanks again.

Hi @TomOs,

Let me join in this conversation and see what we can do to get your sales tax liability report open without inactive items.

The steps provided by @AlexV above appears to be accurate. I've even tried replicating it here on my end and it does what you need. With that said, would it be okay to ask for a screenshot of the Filters tab of the said report. This way, I can take a closer view of a possible case for this issue.

I'd appreciate it if you could provide me a screenshot as soon as you can.

I'm looking forward to hearing again from you. I'll get back to you as soon as possible.