Following your instructions to enter Emergency Paid Sick Leave, we have been manually zeroing out the Employer portion of Social Security and Medicare.  That is fine as long as they are on leave, but when they come back to work, BW calculates YTD and catches up with the missed amounts.  Normally this is a great feature but in this case it wipes out that manual adjustment.  Is there some way around this?

Following your instructions to enter Emergency Paid Sick Leave, we have been manually zeroing out the Employer portion of Social Security and Medicare.  That is fine as long as they are on leave, but when they come back to work, BW calculates YTD and catches up with the missed amounts.  Normally this is a great feature but in this case it wipes out that manual adjustment.  Is there some way around this?

Yes.  In article #104058 “How to enter employee sick pay for Emergency Paid Sick Leave due to COVID-19” covers that there is a setting in PR, Taxes, Maintain Tax Tables.

1. Go to PR, Taxes, Maintain Tax Tables.
2. In the look up, select US for the Federal tables.
3. Click Allowances, Limits and Rates....
4. Deselect the 'Allow self adjusting option' for the appropriate taxes

Since you mentioned you are zeroing out both Social Security (OASDI) and Medicare, in our instructions we only discuss zeroing out the OASDI. Please check with your accountant if you have special instructions for your company to also zero out Medicare too. There is a setting for that as well in Maintain Tax Tables. Please feel free to article #104058 for full instructions.

Sincerely,

Coleen

How will this effect future calculations to employees that are continuing Emergency Family Medical Leave (daycare).?

If you change the setting, it does apply to future calculations as well.  The only issue is - the setting effects all payroll calculations.  You either have the setting on or your have the setting off - no option for special calculations or only for certain people or payroll, etc....  Once you change the setting, it should remain that way until the end of December.  If you change it....the next time you do payroll, it will try to catch up on taxes that you purposely zeroed out.  When you start the new year in January, determine if the setting still applies for your company for the new payroll year.

Sincerely,

Coleen

I can do steps 1-3 BUT when I get to Allowances, Limits and Rates there is no box to deselect.  Nowhere does it say "allow self adjusting option"  Help please!

Even Manual Check Calculations?  The people that are still out are still exempt from OASDI.

The Allow Self Adjusting option is in the Federal tax table. PR Taxes Maintain Tax Tables US

Thank you!

You missed Step #2 to select the US Federal tables.  You have to select US - this is a federal rate.  You are in the State of Wisconsin tables.

As advised, we also turned off the self adjusting option when we began processing FFCRA sick leave wages. However, this work around is going to cause issues with the new year.  We have already received notice that our new SUI rates won't be available until sometime in February.  Once that rate is updated, we will need the self adjusting option to be in on, but we are still having to pay out FFCRA wages.

Has Sage come up with a new solution rather than this work around?  It would be nice if we could specify which taxes are allowed to self adjust and which are not.

Please advise on how you suggest we proceed.

In our instructions for "How to enter employee sick pay for Emergency Paid Sick Leave due to COVID-19 (104058)", the instructions to Allow self adjusting option only refers to the Federal taxes (and mainly in reference to the OASDI), so it would not effect your SUI.  These options are not available for the State Maintain Tax Tables, only the Federal    In the Federal Tax tables you do get the option to select which Federal Taxes you want to Allow self adjusting or not

After closing December, you can change these settings so your 2021 payroll taxes would self adjust again.  If there is a potential for additional FFCRA payments in 2021 for your company, then you may have to review these settings again.

Sincerely,

Coleen