Having problems properly posting my Federal Tax payment for 2020.

Question

I was reviewing a custom report that I have that shows all my Withholding transactions for 2021. In this report I found my 2020 Federal tax payment.

Do I need to change the category for this transaction? If so, to what?

Thanks, Paul

markus1957 · Answer

I suspect you may be incorrectly characterizing "Withholding" in your question. Any Withholding transaction with a 2021 date would be attributed to 2021. You must be referring to some other payment like estimated tax or tax due on a return which can apply to a prior year.  If you are referring to the January estimated tax payment, Quicken has a specific Category that should be assigned to manage estimated tax payments. If you are referring to a payment due as the result of filing your return, then as mentioned above, you should create a custom category for prior year payments.

Also keep in mind, if your custom report is not based off one of the default tax reports it will not exclude the January estimated tax payment for the previous year even when assigned the specific category for estimated taxes. Similarly, if you created a custom category for previous year payments that is a sub-category of a default tax category, it will show up in the default tax reports unless you specifically exclude it.

Your issue may be a little more complex than just a category assignment. It may also involve selecting a default tax report on which to base your custom report.  The best solution to your issue requires more information than you have provided but the responses provided should provide you with enough information to solve it. If not, provide more specific information so a more detailed response can be suggested.

UKR · Answer

What's the date on that  2020 Federal tax payment transaction?
If you made payment in January for last year's tax due, you may need to change the transaction date to 12/31 of last year, so that it reports with the correct (assumed) tax year.

Sherlock · Answer

We use the Tax:Fed category with the W-2:Federal tax withheld, self tax line item and the Tax Spouse:Fed category with the W-2:Federal tax withheld, spouse for our federal withholding entries and the Tax:Fed:1040 category flagged as tax-related but with not tax line item for our federal tax payment transactions.