QuickBooks South Carolina WH-1605 Quarterly Withholding Filing Explained
How QuickBooks handles the SC WH-1605 quarterly withholding return, what gets prefilled, and what users need to enter manually.
QuickBooks Payroll users responsible for South Carolina withholding tax face recurring questions about how the software handles Form WH-1605, the state’s quarterly reconciliation return. The form is built into QuickBooks, but the details around due dates, fourth-quarter handling, and manual entries trip up filers every quarter.
What the WH-1605 Covers
Form WH-1605 is the South Carolina state income tax quarterly reconciliation return. Employers use it to reconcile withholding for the quarter and pay any remaining balance due. QuickBooks prefills most of the fields automatically based on the payroll data already in the company file — company information, payroll items, and employee wage and withholding records flow into the form without manual entry in most cases.
Users should still review every field the software left blank and complete anything missing before filing.
Filing Deadlines and the Fourth-Quarter Exception
The WH-1605 follows the same quarterly due dates as federal returns for the first three quarters of the year:
- First quarter — April 30
- Second quarter — July 31
- Third quarter — October 31
The critical detail many users miss: do not file a WH-1605 for the fourth quarter. South Carolina requires Form WH-1606 instead, which reconciles both the fourth quarter and the full calendar year. Filing the wrong form for Q4 is a common point of confusion for employers managing state compliance through QuickBooks.
Filing Methods
If no payment is due — either because the return shows a zero balance or a refund is owed — filers can use South Carolina’s Business Tax TeleFile system by phone, with nothing to mail. When a payment is due, the return and payment go to:
South Carolina Department of Revenue Withholding Columbia, SC 29214-0004
Fields QuickBooks Does Not Prefill
Several fields require user attention regardless of how complete the payroll data is:
South Carolina Withholding Number. This is a nine-digit number. If it is missing or incorrect, corrections should be made in QuickBooks Payroll Setup or the Payroll Item List setup before generating the form.
Line 2 — Total payments. Enter the total South Carolina income tax deposits or payments made during the quarter.
Line 5 — Penalty and interest. QuickBooks does not calculate penalties or interest. Filers need to use the Penalty and Interest calculator available through the SC MyDORWAY portal to determine any amounts owed.
Line 6 — TeleFile eligibility. This line applies when no payment is due and the filer chooses to TeleFile.
No longer reporting South Carolina Withholding. Check this box if the business is no longer required to report SC withholding, and provide a close date along with an explanation.
Authorization. To allow the Department of Revenue to discuss the return with a paid preparer, check the “Yes” box and enter the preparer’s name and phone number.
Tracing the Numbers
For users who want to verify where the figures on the form originated, QuickBooks provides hyperlinks within the form window that trace withholding amounts back to the underlying payroll data. The in-product Help button offers guidance on navigating the form and troubleshooting specific issues.
Filers who need to work with their payroll data outside of QuickBooks can summarize the information in a spreadsheet, and the software supports saving a completed copy of the form as a PDF for recordkeeping.
Common Sticking Points
The issues that surface most often are straightforward but easy to overlook: filing the WH-1605 for the fourth quarter instead of switching to the WH-1606, leaving the withholding number uncorrected in setup, and forgetting that penalty and interest amounts must come from an external calculator rather than QuickBooks itself. Reviewing the form field by field before submitting — and confirming the correct form for the correct quarter — prevents most filing problems.