Quickbooks Self Employed Estimated Taxes with wife working a "normal" job = inaccurate estimated taxes

[drchance]

I posted this question in the QBSE forum but they referred me to this group. 

This issue may be simple but I cannot find anything online about it and my chat session with a QBSE support person was unhelpful. My estimated taxes are exteremely high (e.g., we make 220K a year and QBSE has me paying 42K).

In short, I'm self-employed, my wife is not. She has a "normal" job that deducts taxes from her monthly paycheck. In QBSE, your asked to fill out your profile. It's very brief, and basically asks 3 questions:

• Are you married?
• Do you file jointly?
• What's your spouse's income?

I believe at this point, QBSE is calculating my monthly taxes based on my income AND my wife's income, regardless of the fact that her company withholds taxes. I can't fix this by saying we're filing separately or that we're not married since that changes a few tax calculations (e.g., standard deduction).

I was expecting QBSE to actually estimate my quarterly taxes with some accuracy based on my income, my wife's income (taking into consideration witholding taxes), and the fact that we're married filing jointly with 0 dependents. Last year we received almost 8K in tax overpayment.

For the last 2 years I receive this incredible refund around April 15 but I'd rather get a much more accurate quarterly tax schedule. Honestly, my work is very simple ... no employees, some mileage reports, routine invoices for services only (no products being sold) ... it doesn't seem like it should be this convoluted. Has anyone else seen this issue?

[tagteam]

I have no idea why they would refer you to this board for a QuickBooks issue, question, or concern.

Regardless, you can most likely use the estimated tax liability function in TurboTax (What If) to get a more accurate assessment.

[Critter-3]

If QB doesn't take into consideration the withholding from your spouse's W-2 job then you need to do so when making estimated payments.  Simply reduce the estimates being suggested  by the corresponding withholding. 

[Opus 17]

Try the IRS web site.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/tax-withholding-estimator

From your description, it sounds like QBSE might be calculating the total tax you are likely to owe.  You would then subtract out your wife's withholding to arrive at your estimated payments.  However, it also sounds like QBSE is not asking about dependents or itemized deductions, which is pretty important.

I don't think anyone on the Turbotax forum will be able to explain Quickbooks for you, I think you need to go back there and find someone else with a higher skill level.  Alternatively, there are one or two users here who might have more familiarity with QBSE.

@VolvoGirl  @Critter-3 

[Critter-3]

I use the downloaded QB program which does no personal income tax estimates like the  online Self Employed QB program does. 

[drchance]

wow ... great responses that make me feel so much better on this side of the forum than QBSE. As @tagteam mentioned, I too have no idea why they pointed me to the Turbo Tax side but it doesn't surprise me. When I explained the issue to a QBSE support tech on the phone, the actually told me I should get consult a tax accountant.

Thanks also for the response from @Opus 17 . QBSE does actually ask for the number of dependents and I believe it does take into consideration itemized deductions on my self-employement side (software, office, etc.) ... but it doesn't appear to do anything with my spouses income other than just add it to my income.

I know more about tax brackets, quarterly estimates, etc. than I really wanted to. I would have expected a "self-employment" tax software to actually make this easier. Again, I don't believe I've thrown an overly complicated situation at the software ... QBSE is apparently just a lot more limited than I thought, I'm really surprised I've spent this much time looking for an answer. But thanks again for the responses ... at least I don't feel like I'm beating my head on tree. There are actually a couple of more "obvious" quirks with QBSE but I'm not here to rip the software ... I just want accurate quarterly tax payments. 😕