Assignigng VAT values to accounts

Klaus Ridder klaus.ridder@gmx.de
Sat, 26 May 2001 18:07:12 +0200


Talking about GnuCash for business:

It is already possible to set accounts to "tax-related", which is quite
useful.
{tax} is inserted in the "notes"-field, as I can see.

I _am_ using gnucash for business, and one of the functions I'm really
missing the most is the possibility to assign a VAT value to every account.
This feature would make Gnucash really usable for business.

I see that Gnucash for business is quite a road ahead, but I think the
following feature probably wouldn't be _too_ difficult to implement and
would REALLY help a LOT:

I imagine the feature as follows:
Every account has a flag, called "VAT". This now can be set to any
percentage (0% - 100% and to "UNSET", which is the default for all
accounts).

Now you can create a "VAT TAX REPORT" that makes a listing of all accounts
tagged in the "tax report", and shows:


Account Name        Tax    Amount

+Business           16%              160$
|--+PCs              -          160$
|  |--without tax    0%      0$


The account "Business" is tagged with 16%, #
the account "PCs" is not tagged at all,
The account "without tax" is tagged with 0%.

The account "PCs", which is not tagged, takes it VAT value from its fahter
account for this report.

Currently, I am handling it the following way:

Business expenses 16%
|--- PCs
Business expenses 0%
|--- PCs

For the VAT report, I print the "Business expenses 16%" account, take my
calculator and calculate the VAT total.
It is just bad that I have to maintain 2 equal account structures for 16%
and 0%. Whith the new feature, I just had to make a sub-account if I had
transactions with different VAT values.

I would love to program this by myself, but I'm sorry I can't, so it would
be great if someone could implement that feature. It would really help me a
lot!

(Some of you might say now: "Oh, this would be better the following way...":
Yes, of course, this is not THE way for business-gnucash. But it helps
around until that is finished.)

Regards,
Klaus Ridder