three old paychecks that deducted taxes to wrong state - How can I edit this so I can pay those taxes into correct state

Hi there, dgovze.

Welcome to the QuickBooks Community. I'll ensure you can pay taxes in the correct state from the incorrect one.

Editing an old paycheck to correct tax withholdings isn't recommended as it may cause further payroll issues. I recommend using a negative liability adjustment instead to correct taxes that were deducted withheld for the wrong state.

To start with, you'll have to find payroll discrepancies by running a payroll check-up. Then, if you need to run a payroll checkup for a previous year, you need to change your computer's system date to the last day of that year. Also, pull up a payroll summary report for the month/quarter you need to adjust. Take note of the amount of the Payroll Items that need adjustments.

Then, you can now adjust your payroll liabilities. Please follow the steps below.

1. Go to the Employees menu at the top and select Payroll Taxes & Liabilities. Then, choose Adjust Payroll Liabilities.
2. From the Date and Effective Date fields, select the last paycheck date of the affected month or quarter.
3. In the Adjustment is for, select either, Employee Adjustment or Company Adjustment.
4. Under the Item Name column, select the payroll item you want to adjust.
5. Enter the Amount of the adjustment. Then, make sure a negative amount.
6. For employee adjustments, if you need to make a wage base adjustment enter the amount under Income Subject to Tax column.
7. Choose Accounts Affected and select OK.

Once done, you can open this article to see further steps on how to finish the process and proceed to step three: Adjust payroll liabilities in QuickBooks Desktop Payroll.

After that, you'll have to perform another liability adjustment and make sure to enter a positive amount to apply to the correct state.

Lastly, you may refer to this article to view steps on how you can fix incorrect amount calculated for state unemployment insurance (SUI) or state withholding (SIT): Troubleshoot incorrect state unemployment (SUI) or withholding (SIT) on paychecks.

Keep me posted if you have further concerns with the employee's paycheck. I'll be here to assist you. Keep safe always, dgovze.

There isn't a way to remove one state's taxes from an existing paycheck or add another states taxes to it.

For various reasons, the best way to handle this is to (very carefully) create replacement paychecks that use the correct state's taxes and overwrite all the amounts on the checks so they exactly match the existing checks.

First, figure out a way to capture the exact amounts of various taxes on the current Checks. A General Journal report (from the Accounts reports menu) for the check, after adding the Payroll Item column can work nicely for this. Print the report.

Next, delete the paychecks (voiding won't work as well as the incorrect state taxes can cause issues for payroll reporting even when voided.)

Next, create new replacement paychecks and make sure all the numbers are the same, resulting in the same net pay.  Manually change any taxes that are different than what happened the first time around, and for the state withholding, manually enter the old state's amount.