Payroll

[Derek Atkins]

Herman <Herman at AerospaceSoftware.com> writes:

> It looks OK to me and it should be fine for most places.  In Canada though, 
> there are also employer's payrol taxes.  These employer's taxes are equal to, 
> or more than the employee's part.  
> 
> The purpose of this is to make the employees think that they pay significantly 
> less tax than they actually do and then vote for the encumbents again at the 
> next election.  Maybe this kind of complication (or worse) also exists in 
> other places?
> 
> See my howto at http://www.AerospaceSoftware.com for an explanation of the 
> Canadian payrol problem.

The US also has employer taxes, in particular the US Social Security
tax is paid half by the employee and half by the employer.  In the US
we've got at least the following taxes/witholdings:

        Federal Witholding
        State Witholding
        FICA (Social Security, etc.)
          - Employee Part
          - Employer Part
        FUTA (Federal Unemployment Tax)
        State Unemployment

Some of these are paid by the employee, some by the employer.

Also, I do question the usefulness of the "Employee" liability
accounts.  I don't see what you really need those.  I think they just
complicate the matter significantly, and I don't see the added
benefit.  You certainly need the Tax Liability accounts, because
you're not (necessarily) depositing the taxes with the taxman every
pay period.

Why can't you have a transaction that looks like this:

2003-01-15      Derek Atkins
                Expenses:Salaries               $85
                Expenses:Tax-1                  $10
                Expenses:Tax-2                  $5
                Liabilities:Tax-1       $10
                Liabilities:Tax-2       $5
                Assets:Checking         $85

Then later:

2003-02-01      Government
                L:Tax-1                         $10
                A:Checking              $10
2003-02-01      Other Goverment
                L:Tax-2                         $5
                A:Checking              $5

I admit that it's harder to see the "$100" gross salary in this
method, but part of me really thinks that that should be ancillary
data.  Adding extraneous accounts seems.... poor.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available