This guide shows you how to record a payment of withheld tax to a tax agency with a withholding remittance. A withholding remittance pays the open withheld amounts from your posted bills, direct expenses, and vendor credits. After completing these steps, the remittance moves the withheld tax out of your withholding tax payable account, the amounts show as Remitted in the Withholding Register, and the records they came from are locked.
Prerequisites
Confirm the following before you create a remittance:
- Posted records: The bills, direct expenses, and vendor credits you’re remitting for are posted. Withheld amounts on draft records aren’t available to remit.
- Tax agency: The tax authority exists as a vendor with Type set to Tax Agency, and it’s set as the Tax agency on the vendors you withheld tax from. See How to Set Up Withholding Tax.
- Bank account: The bank or credit card account you paid from is in the company’s base currency.
- Permissions: You have permission to create vendor payments. Withholding remittances use the vendor payment permissions to view, create, edit, and archive.
Create a withholding remittance
A withholding remittance records one payment to one tax agency, from one bank or credit card account, for the withheld amounts on one liability account.
- Navigate to Accounting → Money Out → Withholding Remittances and select New Withholding Remittance. You can also start one from the Withholding Register report.
- In Date, enter the date you paid the tax agency.
- In Company, select the company that withheld the tax.
- In Payee, select the tax agency you paid.
- In Bank or credit card account, select the account you paid from.
- In Liability account, select the withholding tax payable account the withheld amounts are on.
- Optionally, enter the payment or receipt reference from the tax agency in Reference number.
If you pay more than one tax agency, or your withheld tax is on more than one liability account, create a separate remittance for each tax agency and liability account. The Date decides the period the remittance posts in, so it must fall in a period that’s open for Other GL Transactions.
Select the withheld amounts to remit
Once you’ve chosen the company and liability account, the Withheld amounts to remit section lists the open withheld amounts. An amount is open when its record is posted and it isn’t already on a draft or posted remittance. When you select a Payee, the list shows only amounts from vendors whose Tax agency is that payee.
- Review the open amounts. Each row shows the Record, Vendor, Date, withholding Category, Rate, Net amount, and Withheld amount.
- Select the amounts you’re paying, or select the checkbox in the header row to select them all. Each withheld amount is remitted in full: you can’t remit part of one.
- Check the totals:
- Withheld on bills and expenses is the total withheld on the bills and direct expenses you selected.
- Credit reversals is the total reversed by the vendor credits you selected. These amounts are negative and reduce the remittance.
- Total remittance is the amount you paid the tax agency. It must be above zero.
- Select Save and Post to post the remittance, or Save as draft to finish it later.
All amounts are in the company’s base currency. A withheld amount from a foreign-currency record is converted at that record’s exchange rate.
What happens when you post a remittance
A posted remittance moves the withheld tax from the liability account to your bank or credit card account. For each bill or direct expense amount, it debits the liability account and credits the bank or credit card account. For each vendor credit amount, the entries are reversed. Remittances fall under the Other GL Transactions category for period locking.
As soon as a withheld amount is on a remittance, including a draft, DualEntry locks it on its source record. You can’t change the line’s withholding category, rate, withheld amount, or payable account, or remove the line. You also can’t archive the record or move it out of Posted. See Remitted lines are locked.
Correct or undo a remittance
You can edit a posted remittance with Edit. After you save a remittance, you can’t change its company or liability account. If the remittance has been reconciled or matched to a bank transaction, only its Reference number can change.
To undo a remittance, archive it. Archiving releases its withheld amounts: they become open again, and you can edit their source records. To pay them, create a new remittance. If you recover an archived remittance, DualEntry checks its withheld amounts again, and recovery fails if any of them is now on another remittance.
Archiving doesn’t delete the remittance. It stays on the Archived tab of the Withholding Remittances list, next to the Overview tab for posted remittances and the Draft tab. Open a remittance to see its journal lines on the GL Impact tab and its change history on the Activity tab.
Editing or recovering a remittance needs permission to edit vendor payments, and archiving one needs permission to archive vendor payments. A common correction is a remittance that included an amount you didn’t pay: archive the remittance, then create a new one with only the amounts you paid.
Troubleshooting
These are the most common problems when you remit withholding tax:
- A withheld amount isn’t listed: Check that its record is posted, that the record’s withholding tax payable account is the Liability account you selected, and that the vendor’s Tax agency is the Payee. Amounts already on a draft or posted remittance aren’t listed.
The payee must be a tax agency vendor.: Select a vendor of type Tax Agency in Payee.The bank account must use the company currency.: Select a bank or credit card account in the company’s base currency.The total remittance must be above 0: The vendor credit reversals you selected are equal to or larger than the other amounts. Add more withheld amounts, or remove some vendor credit amounts.Withheld amount ... is on remittance ... Archive that remittance first.: The amount is already on another remittance. Archive that remittance if it was a mistake.
Next steps
Last modified on November 10, 2026
