QuickBooks 2013 For Dummies

The State Wants Some Money, Too

Yeah. I haven’t talked about state payroll taxes — at least not in great detail. I wish that I could provide this sort of detailed, state-specific help to you. Unfortunately, doing so would make this chapter about 150 pages long. It’d also cause me to go stark-raving mad.

My sanity and laziness aside, you still need to deal with state payroll taxes. Let me say, however, that you apply the same basic mechanics to state payroll taxes that you apply to federal payroll taxes. For example, a state income tax works the same way as the federal income tax; employer-paid state unemployment taxes work like the employer-paid federal taxes; and employee-paid state taxes work like the employee-paid Social Security and Medicare taxes.

If you’re tuned in to how federal payroll taxes work in QuickBooks, you really shouldn’t have a problem with the state payroll taxes — at least not in terms of mechanics. Also, note that QuickBooks can now print most state forms for most states. Check the www.quickbooks.com website for more information about this.

The one thing you need to figure out is what your state wants. To do that, you need to get the state’s payroll tax reporting instructions. You may need to call the state. Or with a little luck, you may find online instructions at your state government’s website. If that isn’t much help, you can probably look up the state ...