Our small business accountants from Presti and Naegele try to answer as many questions from businesses and individuals as they can. This includes answering questions posted in Yahoo Answers, regarding different functionalities in QuickBooks bookkeeping programs. As we provide tax services as well, our personal favorite questions are the ones that are related to both taxes and the accounting business software. And in time we had come across a couple of interesting questions regarding sales tax items, which I thought to share with you, maybe youll find it helpful.

Question: How do I put in the most common sales tax item if I use services?
Answer: Sales Tax items are used to determine the tax rate and who you make the payment to when you collect sales tax. For example, here in New York I would setup an item called NY Sales Tax with an 8.875% rate payable to New York Department of Taxation and Revenue.

If I need to collect sales tax from other locations (like Philadelphia, for example) I would create a new item with a different tax rate and payable vendor name.

If you do most of your sales under one code then you set that as your most common sales tax item. This will be the default when creating a new sale, but it can be changed if needed. Since most of my clients are in New York, I would set NY as my most common instead of Philadelphia.

When you go to pay your sales tax, QuickBooks accounting business software groups together all of the taxes that are paid to the same vendor. In my case, I sometimes have to collect 8.875% from people in Manhattan, but only 8.675% from someone in Long Island. Both are still paid to New York State Department of Taxation however.

To pay sales tax, go to the Vendors menu, select Sales Tax, and then Pay Sales Tax. QuickBooks bookkeeping programs will list all your different tax items with the amount that you have collected. You place a check next to the sales taxes you are going to pay. If you selected two different tax rates that are paid to the same vendor (the 8.875% and 8.675% in my example) it will create one check for the total of both sales tax items. If I also selected the Philadelphia tax item, it would create a separate check for that vendor as it gets sent to a different person.

Depending on your business, you may need to collect sales tax based on where your business is located or based on the location of your client. You should ask an accountant to verify when and how much tax you need to collect.
Question: How to pay monthly taxes on QuickBooks Pro 2012?

Answer: First you will need to enable to preference for sales tax. To do this:
1. Go to Edit menu > Preferences
2. Select Sales Tax from the list of preferences, and click on the Company Preference
3. Select Yes for the option: do you charge sales tax
4. Select the most common sales tax item you use.
5. Then select monthly under the option for: When do you pay sales tax.
6. To start paying sales tax, Go to the Vendors menu, choose Sales Tax, and then click Pay Sales Tax.

Do you have any other tax related questions for our QuickBooks advisor team?