I want to track sales tax, but I also want the cost of an item to include sales tax - how?

[jgombos]

>
>(total food expenses) + (VAT rate)
>so if VAT is 17.50%
>TFE + 17.5% = actual expended funds.

VAT is computed differently in different regions, so travelers don't have
the option of computing it from the total balance.

>Don't make the mistake of having your business accounts muddled up with
your 
>personal accounts - perhaps you are doing this here 

At the moment gnucash is only used for personal finances; although if it
turns out to be a suitable tool I will start using it for a rental account.

>OR make the mistake of incredible complexity in the accounts when you could
be 
>doing the same calculation once on the total instead of one thousand times
on 
>each individual entry.

It seems there is a limitation in that tool that requires a huge number of
accounts in this scenario.  What I'm finding is that it's not possible to
accomplish what I want without introducing astronomical complexity. 
Consequently, I've decided it's not worth it.  I'm going to sacrifice some
data (VAT in this case) to keep it simple.  

>There is lots of qualified and unqualified assistance on this list, so a 
>little more information from you will help you to get an answer closer to 
>your needs.

I gave a specific example, but this same problem appears in a few different
cases.  

Eg. Suppose I order a scanner.  The scanner itself has a cost, plus there's
a shipping cost.  So I create a shipping account because it's interesting to
track what I'm spending on shipping expenses.  However, it's also quite
interesting to know how much I spend on office equipment.  The cost of
procuring office equipment includes the cost of shipping it.  But because
each dollar can only be assigned to one expense, information is lost. 
AFAIK, there is no practical way for gnucash to track both the cost of
having an office, and the cost of shipping.  If my only shipping expenses
were for office equipment, then it wouldn't be a problem.  

Another example:  I buy a plane ticket.  Sometimes it's for work, other
times it's for vacation.  Having an Expenses:Airfare account is useful
because it enables me to see how much I spend on air travel.  But I also
need to know how much I spend on job searching (ie. flying to job
interviews).  In this case it's okay to create Expenses:Personal_Airfare and
Expenses:Work_Related:Travel, because a couple extra accounts is still
manageable.  But looking at the whole picture, it's not always practical to
create more accounts.

Are there any financial tools that can account for overlapping expenses? 
That is, expenses that are trackable as more than one type of expense.
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