Why are some employees' past year EA Form showing negative/less gross income amount?

Scenario: Upon closing last year's payroll, I noticed some employees have a negative amount on their Section B1(a) of the EA Form. They are supposed to have positive amounts showing. Some other employees are less than what it's supposed to be. Why is this so?

Possible Cause: The Employee's "Income Tax Resident" and "Tax Category" were left empty last year before the payroll was ran

You may note that the employee already has these columns filled in currently, however, they were most likely left empty last year. If they were already completed, this will produce a correct result for this year's EA form but this still step only cannot fix the last year's one. The Income Tax Resident and Tax Category fields are mandatory fields regardless if the employee is paying tax or not. These fields are located under the Bank & Statutory tab under the Employee's profile. To check, follow the solution guide below:

Step 1

Check if the fields are still empty or have been completed. Go to the Employee's profile by clicking on the left icon > Employee > Directory.

Step 2

Double click on the employee's name and you'll be brought to his/her profile. Once you are under the employee's profile, click on Bank & Statutory
.

Step 3

Note under the Income Tax section as shown below, under the two main fields as discussed earlier in the Introduction, the Income Tax Resident and Tax Category fields. In this sample, it is most likely that the employee's fields have been filled this year. Meaning to say, back in 2020, they were empty. Do note that completing the fields this year will not be able to fix the EA Form for last year. Read further to find out how to fix it.

Step 4

Let's determine which employees are non-taxpayers in 2020. It is very likely that the employees affected are those that are not paying tax because, if they are tax-payers, they will definitely have the fields completed to ensure their tax are deducted correctly. An easy way to find out who are non-taxpayers in 2020 is by running the YTD (PCB) Report for 2020. Go to the report icon > Payroll > Year to Date (PCB) as shown in the screenshot below.

Step 5

Select the company and the year. Then click Generate Report. A sample of the report is shown below. Do note the employees with RM0.00 in the Grand Total column. These are the non-taxpayers. We can use this list to run our checks as shown from Step 1 to Step 3. 

Step 6

Once you have ensured that all the employees' Income Tax Resident and Tax Category fields are completed, as a preventive action, let's move on to the corrective action. We are at the stage of manually amending their EA Form. Go to the left icon > Payroll > Transaction > Payroll Figures Take On.

Note: The reason why we need to do the corrections manually rather than re-running payroll is that all the statutory contributions, particularly tax deductions have been finalized for last year. 

Step 7

Select the employee, the correct year, and company name. Click on Edit as shown below to enter the edit mode.

Step 7

Enter the missing amount and click Save. Thereafter, if you go back to the EA Form at the left icon > Payroll > Payroll Review > EA Form, you will be able to see that the EA Form has been corrected accordingly. To find out more on how to input the missing amount to the Payroll Figures Take On, you may also refer to another article, How to use the YTD Employee Statistic reference to adjust Payroll Figures Take On(https://worksy.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/63000269162-how-to-use-the-ytd-employee-statistic-reference-to-adjust-payroll-figures-take-on-)