Employees and payroll

Thank you for joining the thread, @sfvaughan.

The Internal Revenue System (IRS) requires employers to withhold federal, social security and medicare taxes from the employees' wages. If paychecks don't calculate federal income taxes, the employees' filing status, wage base, exemptions or allowances may be the reason.

You can use the official IRS Employer's Tax Guide to find out how much should be deducted from the employees' paychecks based on their filing status, pay period, and any other deductions. This allows you to possibly determine the cause for a lack of deduction.

Also, I encourage updating your payroll tax table version to the latest release to ensure payroll taxes are calculated correctly.

Here's how:

1. Open your QuickBooks Desktop, then go to the Employees menu.
2. Select Get Payroll Update from the drop-down.
3. Choose the Download Entire Update checkbox.
4. Tap on Update.

For additional reference about this action, read these articles:

• Verify that a tax table update is downloaded and installed
• Latest payroll news and updates

I'm also adding this article for additional reference about paycheck calculation in QuickBooks Desktop: Payroll items on paycheck are not calculating or are calculating incorrectly.

Get back to me if you have any other questions. I'm a few clicks away to help. Have a good day!