Sales tax on split transactions

[Matthew Vanecek]

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On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 04:42, Jochen De Smet wrote:
> I don't need GNUCash to make the decisions as to
> what to tax and what not for me, I'd just like some
> option to make it less work :)
>=20
> One possibility would be to have an option in the
> right-click menu of an entry on a split transaction
> that says "Add tax line" which would ask for a percentage
> and fill in the rest of the fields by itself. (Ideally
> there would be a place to enter one or more percentages
> that could then be selected directly from a submeny)
>=20

The problem occurs when you spend money on non-taxable items
(non-preprocessed food items, for example).  You don't want to apply
taxes to such items.  Much easier would be to enter a Split for the
sales tax as it is represented on the receipt.

> I've considered setting up a seperate account for the tax
> but decided against it. For certain expenses like restaurant
> bills i only record the total amount. If i would put the
> tax for other accounts outside those accounts it would skew
> the expense pie charts.
>=20

If you're going to track tax, you should track it for everything you
spend money on.  Otherwise, your expense charts won't be really
accurate.  So your decision was probably a good thing.

Me, I'm just lazy.  I consider the sales tax to be part of the expense
of whatever I spent money on.=20=20

> Which does touch another wishlist item though. It would indeed
> be nice to know how much i spent on tax, even if the tax entries
> are spread out over several expense accounts. Maybe there could
> be something like a virtual account. It would be read-only and
> would not count in any calculations, and it would contain all
> entries from other accounts that match a certain set of conditions.
>=20

How would you flag an entry as a tax entry, without expensing it to a
tax expense account?  It's almost impossible, I think, to use a set
percentage for calculating taxes.  I buy stuff all over my area, and the
tax rates are all different in the different cities, and out in the
counties, too.  That's why I don't worry about taxes--it's just part of
the expense of buying <whatever>.

You may want more detail than that, and I think the easiest way to
implement is to create a sales tax account, and record the sales tax
from all your receipts.  Kind of tedious, of course.

--=20
Matthew Vanecek
perl -e 'print $i=3Dpack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
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*****
For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except=
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I'm always getting in the way of something...

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