Payroll Withholding Tax Payments

Goldenseal says I owe a whole bunch of payroll taxes!

Goldenseal payroll software automatically tracks the payroll taxes that you owe to each tax agency.

If you entered previous payroll or if you didn't pay your tax agencies through Goldenseal, then it will still think you owe those taxes.

Clearing Tax Items

To "clean up" the payroll tax records, start by using the Pay Bills command to pay them. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Choose Pay Bills from the Bank menu.
2. Enter Payroll Taxes into the popup field at upper right.
3. You'll see a list of all tax agencies. Double-click on an agency.
4. You'll see a list of all taxes that Goldenseal thinks you owe. Make sure all incorrect taxes are marked with a checkmark. HINT-- if you hold down the Shift key when you click on a checkmark, Goldenseal will fill in all of the rows.
5. Click OK.
6. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each agency.
7. When you are done, click Create Checks.
8. When you are asked how you'll pay for the items, just leave the Account field blank.
9. Goldenseal will create Other Cost transactions to pay for all the marked tax items.
10. Enter Vendor Invoice for the payment method, and enter any payment terms.

This will remove the unpaid taxes from the Pay Bills window for Payroll Taxes.

Offsetting Credit

Now you can create an offsetting transaction to cancel the taxes that are due (erroneously). To do so, follow these steps:

1. Choose Other Costs from the Costs menu.
2. Scroll to the last record.
3. Check the total amount due.
4. Click the New button.
5. Enter the same tax agency into the Supplier field.
6. In the Apply To field, enter Credit.
7. In the Amount field, enter the negative of the amount from step 3.
8. Enter job cost info for the item.
9. Enter Vendor Invoice for the payment method, and enter any payment terms.
10. When you are finished, choose Save Record from the Edit menu to save the credit transaction (you can also hit the Enter key on your keyboard).
11. If you need to adjust more than one tax agency, scroll to the other tax payments and repeat steps 3 to 9.

When you use the Pay Bills command to check the current balance for Other Cost accounts, the two transactions you have just entered will cancel each other, and result in a net balance of zero.

Clearing Invoices

The next time you use the Pay Bills command to write a check to the vendor, you can also include the two transactions you created above. They won't change the check amount (since they cancel out), and Goldenseal will mark them both as paid.

NOTE-- Sometimes people get confused, because we use Pay Bills for two different things here. When you have Payroll Taxes as the vendor type, Goldenseal creates an invoice for taxes due. When you have Other Costs as the vendor type, Goldenseal creates a check to pay for the tax invoice.

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