Tax owed amount goes up when entering expenses transactions

Hello there, @kat12.

Let’s work together and figure out why your expenses aren’t correctly affecting your estimated taxes.

You’re right! The expenses entered in QuickBooks Self-Employed should deduct your taxes. If this isn’t working how it should, we need to double-check the categories used for these expenses.

To do this, you’ll need to first filter the Transactions page so you can catch those incorrectly categorized transactions. Here’s how:

1. Go to Transactions in the left panel.
2. In the Type: All drop-down, select the type of transactions you want to check first (Business Income, Spending, Personal, Excluded, and etc).
3. Choose the date range you need.

If you need to change the categories used, you can update it from the Category column. Then, click Save.

For your reference, I have an IRS link for you about deducting business expenses:

Deducting Business Expenses

Also, you can save these articles for future use:

• Category types Income and expenses
• Estimated taxes explained

That should do it! These steps should give you correct taxes in QBSE.

Feel free to update me on how the filtering of transactions goes. I’ll be around.

Hey @kat12! Can you give an example of an expense you've entered recently that impacted your taxes owed? Can you share which category you used when you marked it as business?

Thanks for joining us here, Hayjuls. 

You might have selected a non-deductible expense category. I would suggest reaching out to our phone or chat support team so they can review your transactions. Here's how:

1. Go to Help at the upper-right part of QuickBooks Self-Employed.
2. Select Contact Us, then fill in the Ask a question field.
3. Choose Chat and fill out the requested details, then click Chat Now.

Visit us again in the Community if you have other questions.