Payroll Filings and Tax Payments

Every pay run you post puts the taxes withheld and the employer's taxes in the payroll liability. Tax payments take them out again as you pay the agencies, and Payroll filings gives you the figures of your payroll returns from the posted pay runs and those payments.

Menu	Payroll > Tax payments, Payroll > Payroll filings, Settings > Payroll
Permission	View pay runs and pay stubs; Run and post payroll (to enter payments)
Feature	Payroll

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Before you start

In Settings > Payroll, choose your federal deposit schedule. The IRS sets it each year from your lookback period (see IRS Publication 15); a new employer deposits monthly.

• Monthly: the taxes of a month's pay dates are due by the 15th of the next month.
• Semiweekly: pay dates on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday are due the next Wednesday; pay dates on Saturday to Tuesday are due the next Friday.

Record a tax payment

1. Pay the agency: for federal deposits, through EFTPS or your bank.
2. Open Payroll > Tax payments.
3. Enter the date paid and what it pays:
   • Federal deposit (941): federal income tax withheld, Social Security and Medicare.
   • Federal unemployment (940): FUTA.
   • State unemployment, City income tax, State income tax withheld (a state other than Michigan) and State contribution (such as Massachusetts paid leave).
4. Enter the period it pays: a quarter such as 2026-Q3 (always a quarter for a 941 deposit), or a year such as 2026.
5. Enter the amount, the account it was paid from, and the confirmation (the EFTPS acknowledgement number).
6. Select Post.

The payment comes out of the payroll liability and the bank account. Change corrects a payment; Delete removes it and takes it out of the books.

Michigan income tax withheld is not entered here: it is paid with the sales, use and withholding return, which takes it out of the payroll liability.

Payroll filings

Payroll > Payroll filings shows a year and one of its quarters. Choose the year with the arrows and the quarter with Q1 to Q4.

Section	What it has	Due
Form 941	Lines 1 to 15 of the quarter: wages, federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare wages and tax, the fractions of cents, the deposits and the balance due; line 16, the liability of each month; and each deposit with its due date	The last day of the month after the quarter
Form 940	The total payments, the payments above the $7,000 FUTA base of each employee, the FUTA tax, the deposits, and the liability of each quarter; a FUTA deposit is due once the tax is above $500	January 31
Forms W-2 and W-3	Boxes 1 to 6, 14 (state contributions such as PFML), 15 to 17 (each state) and 18 to 20 (each city) of each employee, and the W-3 totals	January 31
State income tax withheld	For each state, the employees, wages and withholding of each quarter, for its withholding returns (Michigan's are lines of the sales, use and withholding returns)	With each return

A due date that falls on a weekend moves to the Monday. Federal holidays are not counted yet, and neither is the next-day rule for a day with $100,000 or more of taxes; check those yourself.

Fractions of cents (941 line 7) is the difference between what the paychecks withheld and owed, each rounded to the cent, and the rates applied to the quarter's wages. It is usually a few cents either way.

note

Al-Mohaseb gives you the figures; it does not e-file the 941, 940 or W-2s, or make EFTPS payments, yet. Copy the figures to the forms, to the IRS and SSA sites, or to your e-file provider.

Check the numbers

• The 941 Total taxes of a quarter is what the pay runs put in the liability for federal taxes; once your deposits match it, Balance due is 0.
• The Payroll Liabilities balance in the trial balance is what is still owed: what was withheld and owed, less every payment.