Question

Sales Tax Liability Report has a bug

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 25, 2020
16 replies
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Spent approx 5 hours on the phone today with 3 QB experts. The first two I got cut off before getting a resolution. The last one I was able to convince there's a bug in the report. She told me she was going to email me a case number so I could track the problem investigation and resolution but that was approx an hour ago and I have had no such email.

So... in approximate terms my client's Q1 actual sales total gross was $67k but the STLR reported $50k as the gross sales. There's a similar discrepancy between the actual "non-taxable" sales and the STLR reported non-taxable sales. Can someone please get this bug fixed?

What I have come to understand is the Sales Tax Liability Report (STLR) only includes in "gross sales" sales receipts that included a taxable item and the "non-taxable" amount on the report is only the non-taxable components on the sales receipts that also contained a taxable amount. Are you with me? or does this just sound like and Irish riddle? (it does to me)

In the end I was able to prove out my theory by exporting all sales to excel, grouping them by sales receipt number and deleting all the receipts that had a taxable component and then sum what was left (all receipts that did not include a taxable line item). Really - QB should have been doing that work, instead I spent about 5 hours repeatedly looking at the same collection of reports with 3 different people (and at times on hold while they talked with a tier one expert on their line) to not get any help. I offered a theory as to what could explain the difference and was left to work through that myself.

Lastly - the STLR NEEDS to include sales to exempt customers so that clients can report total gross sales, non-taxable sales, taxable sales and sales to exempt customers correctly.

QuickBooks Online

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R

RGG321

We just moved to QBO.

I am having this same issue when trying to pay my Washington State monthly sales tax that includes B&O tax on wholesale sales. There is not a report in the system (that we can find) and on-line support was not a help (said they'd email answers and got nothing!).

I need a single report that will give me by month by State sales, then breakdown the revenue for Washington State by Retail (by county for different sales tax rates) and Wholesale (for B&O tax).

I hate to say this by QB2019 Desktop had this sales tax reporting feature and it worked great each and every month. I cannot believe QBO does not have this feature.

Does anyone know of anything existing or how it can be developed without a huge work around?

Thank you

L

laughable accountant

I run a P&L report for the tax time period and add my taxable sales items together. Then I file on the state site with that info, then I enter the payment with any adjustment into the sales tax section of QBO so it records the payment from checking correctly. I haven't trusted QBO in over a year and I don't want to have a missed error that I have to then refile my taxes. Sorry, I don't have a way to fix filing through QB for you. Takes me an extra five minutes, but I sleep better than blindly trusting the figures the QB tax section provides.

S

shelli5683

Here we are March 2023... and still a bug in the sales tax liability report. WTH?

Currently, when I pull up a liability report (pick a state, any state) It will give me the Gross sales (correct), the non-taxable (correct), the taxable amount (SO NOT CORRECT), and the tax amount (usually not correct).

The taxable amount is pulling items that are marked taxable - where taxable (which means it is not taxable in every state), but it ALWAYS pulls on the taxable line even when its not taxed? Try to reconcile that with a tax company (i.e. Avalara) that pulls and files CORRECTLY. So there is nothing but adjustments in almost every state every month.

BOTTOM LINE: The "taxable amount" on the liability reports should only include the sales that are ACTUALLY taxed.

@arkvalleyinfo - please figure this out!

L

lakesidelawn2014

Right on @shelli5683

I am so sick of this of this problem. Get your reports fixed @arkvalleyinfo. I don't understand why it can't be fixed. Unless it is their way of getting us sucked into the "expert" end. Ain't going to work for me. I'd rather suffer every month until I find something new than to give QBO anymore money.

S

SheilaCentral

Is this still an ongoing problem?

We can not get our STLR Gross sales to march our actual gross sales for the month.

Our company has non-taxable sales and taxable sales. Is there a way to fix the SLTR to match?

K

KatnissBookkeeperAuthor

Improvements were made to our STLR and for a while, the totals matched... NOW however, the overall totals of non-taxable, taxable etc. are no longer on the report, requiring a manual addition which frankly, I don't have time for with several clients filing over 20 jurisdictions per month. So for some time now I've used a different procedure to calculate what's owed (in CO we also switched to destination sales tax which essentially bears little/no resemblance to STLR anyway). I can say that gennnnnnerally, the amounts in STLR are 'about right' as I go through and mark the various agencies as paid, but it's not perfect (witness that some of the liability accounts have to be reconciled and corrected +/- periodically).

Natch, using terms like "about right" go against my bookkeeping grain, but it seems that in spite of years of complaints and protest, QB doesn't really give a hoot that their clients are likely filing incorrect sales tax reports as a direct result of their inability to program a report or two.

ICYMI - I have to add a custom field for invoices/sales receipts for the jurisdiction code for sales tax based on each client's address for CO destination taxes because QBO puts out tax jurisdictions in unfathomable labels that don't relate even slightly to where to file e.g. QBO name: CO-Douglas-99501 but the actual jurisdiction the sale fell into might be 47-0206. Then pull a sales by product/service detail report export, skoot it over to excel and then use formulas unique to find all the tax codes and sumif to figure out gross sales, taxable, tax amounts and non-taxable for filing for each tax code. QBO is mostly correct on the % for each jurisdiction however there are a couple that are off and I've complained (bitterly) about those.

Plum

S

shelli5683

Thank you for replying on my string… and I will reiterate that all of this has not been fixed! It’s kind of unreal actually.

I agree with ALL you have said and appreciate that I am not the only one with this problem!

K

KatnissBookkeeperAuthor

@shelli5683

alas - no you aren't the only one (though maybe this is a small consolation)

alas - as you can see I started this thread back in April 2020 and was not the first to raise the issue even then and here we are on the brink of 2024 still (only) receiving platitudes.

alas - many probably don't even realize their STLR is giving them incorrect information

alas - many are probably filing sales tax returns that are false

alas - my, nor anyone else's salty commentary here doesn't seem to get through

alas - it will likely take a law suit against Intuit for this issue before it will get fixed.

ps. I also deeply despise the sales tax 'center' in QBO which wastes valuable real estate on the screen, requires nearly 10,000 clicks to achieve what one or two would do AND produces faulty reports. The process to apply payments on various sales tax agencies is - pedestrian at best, and I'm being very kind. Taken as a whole - it's shameful and Intuit should be thoroughly embarrassed but instead we get old tropes like "actively working on it" and "understand your frustration". Gah... if I had engineers working on an bug for 4+ yrs without a fix, well... let's just say they wouldn't be my engineers any more.

R

RGG321

I know this will sound lazy but after using QBO last year for 6 weeks, we moved everything back to QB Desktop where it all works as expected. We did have to reenter every transaction for those 6 weeks so that was a challenge but QBO was not going to cut it for us, regardless what QB told us. And unfortunately, I know more than a few companies going back to and staying on Desktop, until they force us to QBO someday. But then maybe we'll look for a different accounting option.

L

Litman Enterprises

Did you ever get this resolved? Everything I have is taxable item (unless of course my customer is tax exempt or direct pay) I have tax exempt lines in the taxable sales column and sometimes I can go in and literally re-enter exactly as I have them and resave and get them to move to the non taxable sales column but this is exhausting and does not always work. I can not use the "based on location" as it doesnt work and it would not work for me because I have well sites that do not have an address (we tried just citys, counties, nothing worked so we don't use that and we manually enter the tax on each invoice but it still shows up how it chooses in the reports

AlverMarkT

Thanks for joining the thread, @Litman Enterprises.

It appears that you've posted the same concern about the sales tax liability report in QuickBooks Online (QBO) to which my colleague has responded. You can check out my colleague's response through this link: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/employees-and-payroll/re-is-anyone-else-finding-that-based-on-location-is-calculating/01/1441390#M128605.

We'll be here in the Community if you have further updates about running the report. Take care.

R

RiverValleyBlinds

We too are having major issues with our Sales Tax calculating incorrectly, especially the last 6 months or so. Nontaxable items, unchecked in invoices, etc.. keeping showing as "taxable" in the calculations, but "zero tax amount". It makes our sales tax amount due wrong, and therefore not matching what we actually need to pay. It is not consistently wrong, but has gotten worse and worse and harder to fix.

We've reached out to online support, & have had hours of looking, screen sharing, etc.. with no answers. We too can sometimes go in and delete /re-enter exactly as we have invoices, resave and get them to move to the non taxable sales column - but is extremely time consuming, and now only works part of the time. We have cleared computer caches, verified all nontaxable line are entered correctly, tax settings correct, locations, etc.. This is a glitch in sales tax calculations and reports. I looked at the other thread your colleague responded to, but that thread issue is not our issue, as it's Re: a location based issue. This is a general sales tax issue for nontaxable items and services. We need this resolved.. please add us to any cases or investigations ongoing. Thank you

G

garlandbusinesssolutions

We are experiencing this same problem with the sales tax liability report not reflecting the correct information. Please add me to this feed so I can see when it is resolved.

Thank you,

Amy

J

JuliaMikkaelaQ

I can see you're one of the users who've experienced the same issue with the Sales tax liability report showing incorrect data for taxable and non-taxable items, garlandbusiness.

Since the investigation for INV-101359 is ongoing, I recommend contacting our Customer Live Support so they can add you to the list of affected users. This way, you'll get updated on its status and the resolution once it's available.

Here's how you can reach them:

Go to the Help menu, then select the Search tab.
Click Contact Us.
Choose a topic, then enter a brief description of your concern and hit Continue.
Pick either Chat with us or Have us call you and start connecting with them.

Please ensure to check their support hours to know when agents are available.

In case you want personalized data shown on your reports that focus on the details that matter and fit your reporting needs, these are the helpful references that can guide you:

We're one reply away if you have additional queries or concerns about managing reports. We'll be willing to lend a hand. Keep safe.

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