Payroll taxes on Profit and Loss Report doesn’t match Tax and Wage Summary in Intuit Online Payroll

Hi there, @Cherrycokegirl.

Welcome and thank you for posting here in the Community. It's my pleasure to help share information about running reports in QuickBooks.

The Tax & Wage Summary Report gives a snapshot of your employee's taxable wages. It also shows the taxes withheld from those wages. On the other hand, the Profit and Loss Report summarizes your income and expenses for the year, so you can tell whether you're operating at a profit or loss.

The reason why the two reports have different amount because the Profit and Loss Report only shows the employer expenses, which includes the employee's wages and the taxes paid by the employer.

To learn more about these reports, you can check these articles:

• How to customize your Profit and Loss report
• Run a Payroll Tax and Wage Summary report
• View the Payroll Tax and Wage Summary report

Don't hesitate to add a comment below if you have any other questions about running reports, I'm always here to help you. Have a good one!

It also matters if you have Fringe Benefits, Tipped Wait Staff, and other activities that are not Wages or even as expense for the employer. Example:

Tips are not Expense to the employer, but there is Employer tax and this is Wages for the Wait Staff, not paid from the employer but from customer tips collected, which was carried as a Liability for the employer, until payroll is run.

Thank you for your reply.  I understand that the two reports serve different purposes, but shouldn't I be able to add up all of the employer tax amounts paid on the Tax Liability report and it should match the payroll taxes paid on the Profit and Loss report for the same time period?

Thank you for your reply.  I understand that the two reports serve different purposes, but shouldn't I be able to add up all of the employer tax amounts paid on the Tax Liability report and it should match the payroll taxes paid on the Profit and Loss report for the same time period?

Thank you for your reply.  I don't have fringe benefits or tips or any special circumstances.  My payroll is very straightforward.  I just want to understand why the employer tax amounts paid on the Tax Liability report don't match the payroll taxes paid on the Profit and Loss report for the same time period?

Hello there, Cherrycokegirl.

Yes, you can add up all the employer's tax amounts paid in the Tax Liability report to match them to the Profit and Loss report.

Regarding your second question, the possible reason why these reports aren't matched is that they may have set up to a different periods. Also, it's possible that there might be transactions in your Profit and Loss report that are not shown in the tax amount paid of the Tax Liability report. Let's check and compare the transactions of these two reports.

Feel free to get back to the Community team if you have additional questions. We'll be right here to help. Have a good day!

I had the same issue and discovered that a payroll item (PTO) was posting to an employer payroll tax account instead of a wage expense account.