Michigan UIA 1028 Quarterly Wage Report: What QuickBooks Fills In and What You Must Check

QuickBooks desktop payroll can prefill the majority of fields on Michigan’s Form UIA 1028 — the Employer’s Quarterly Wage/Tax Report — but employers are still responsible for verifying the data and filing it electronically through the state’s MiWAM portal. The form is filed each calendar quarter with the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs and reports wage information for every employee who worked during the quarter.

Electronic Filing Is Mandatory

All employers must file the UIA 1028 electronically through the MiWAM website. Registration is required before filing. QuickBooks generates the report and populates most fields from existing company, payroll, and employee data, but filers should review every field the software left blank and supply any missing information manually. In most cases, if all payroll data is current and complete in QuickBooks, minimal manual entry is needed.

The software also offers options to summarize payroll data in a spreadsheet or save the completed form as a PDF for recordkeeping.

Employer Type: Contributing vs. Reimbursing

The form distinguishes between two employer categories, and selecting the correct one matters for how unemployment insurance tax is calculated.

Contributing employers are private, for-profit businesses — which covers most employers. These employers pay unemployment insurance tax based on a formula tied to their claims history and payroll size. Each quarter, they file the UIA 1028 to compute and remit that tax.

Reimbursing employers are units of government and certain non-profit organizations — generally those whose purpose is educational, religious, cultural, or scientific and that hold tax-exempt status. Rather than paying a tax rate, reimbursing employers repay the state directly for unemployment benefits paid to former workers.

Key Fields QuickBooks May Not Fill

Several fields commonly require manual attention:

Amended Return — If the filing corrects a previously submitted report, mark it as amended and include the reason for the correction.

Family Owned — This field should be left blank unless the business qualifies as family owned under Michigan’s specific definition: majority interest owned by the employee alone, by the employee’s son, daughter, or spouse, by any combination of those individuals, or by the employee’s parents if the employee is under 18. Qualifying businesses enter “F” in this column.

Social Security Numbers — Michigan requires a valid Social Security number for each employee before wage amounts can be processed. Missing or incorrect numbers will hold up the filing.

Gross Wages — Wage detail must be reported for every covered employee who was paid during the quarter. The critical distinction: report only wages actually paid during the quarter, not wages earned but not yet paid. Workers whose services are excluded from coverage under Section 43 of the Michigan Employment Security Act should not be included.

What This Means in Practice

The workflow generally runs smoothly when QuickBooks company setup, employee records, and payroll items are all configured correctly — the software pulls employer account numbers, tax rates, employee names, Social Security numbers, and wage totals into the form automatically. Problems tend to surface when data is incomplete or outdated: an employee record missing a Social Security number, a wage figure that does not match the general ledger, or an employer type that was never set up properly in the company profile.

For broader help resolving payroll form and filing issues in QuickBooks, verifying that employee records and state tax setup are complete before generating the report can prevent most common errors.

The accepted guidance is straightforward: let QuickBooks do the heavy lifting on data entry, but treat the prefilled form as a draft — not a finished filing — until every field has been reviewed against source records.