If you automatically create paychecks from either time data or prior paycheck hours/wages, you can experience issues with the next scheduled payroll not computing the payroll taxes. The improper computations can take the form of taxes not being computed, computing only certain taxes (but not all), or incorrectly computing taxes (the wrong amounts).
When you experience tax changes from one pay period to another, especially when earnings don't change, it can result from either a hung-up payroll update or from installing a payroll update between the time hours and earnings were posted, but paychecks were actually completed and processed.
It can also occur if you change an employee's tax information in their employee record, impacting tax computations after their time data or prior paycheck hours/wages have been populated to their paycheck-in-progress.
In most cases, you can resolve the failure to compute taxes using the 'Revert Paycheck' feature in QuickBooks Desktop Payroll; QuickBooks will then undo the payroll data saved before any update(s).
To Revert Paychecks:
- Select Pay Employees from the Home Page.
- Choose Scheduled Payroll
- Then choose Resume Scheduled Payroll.
- One or more employees' names will be highlighted yellow on the Enter Payroll Information window. These are the employees who have erroneous tax computations.
- Right-click on the yellow-highlighted employee name.
- When the menu option appears, select Revert Paycheck.
- Repeat steps 5 and 6 for each employee name highlighted in yellow.
- After you've completed step 7, highlight one of the employees whose check was reverted and select Open Paycheck Detail.
- When the Review Paycheck window opens, make appropriate adjustments to earnings and verify that the paycheck taxes are correctly computed.
- Once completed, proceed with the payroll normally; select Continue.
You've likely resolved the payroll tax computation problem you were having. Good luck!