Automatically split transactions with sales tax or VAT (Value added tax) when a transaction is booked to an sales or value-added-tax related account

[Oliver König]

Hello,
I have posted two feature request for GnuCash at bugzilla:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364378
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=371581

Both feature requests are actually just one feature request. The first one 
describes the problem for users of GnuCash in countries who have got a Value 
added tax (e.g. Europe, etc) and the latter one for those countries with 
sales tax (e.g. USA). However the feature is the same in both cases:

> Example:
> Let's say an American supermarket sells a t-shirt for cash 10.00 US$ (net),
> 11.00 (gross). The sales tax (sales tax 10%). . 
> The supermarket accountant enters a new split transaction in GnuCash:
> 
> Bank(+) 11 -> Sales (+) 10.00
>                     -> Sales Tax(+) 1.00
> 
> The problem with this is that the accountant always has to enter a split
> transaction when a taxable item is sold. That can be a lot of work if he/she
> has several thousand transcations! Therefore I would like Gnucash to
> automatically create a split transaction when a taxable product/ service is
> sold allowing the GnuCash user to save a LOT OF TIME if he has many
> transactions. So when the accountant adds a new account like "Sales" GnuCash
> should allow him/her to define whether the sales are taxable and if so what 
> is
> the sales tax percentage. Then each time he books to the sales account the
> transaction is split into sales and a separate sales tax account.
> 
> Adding this feature to GnuCash would probably significantly save many
> accountants a lot of time!

One of the GnuCash developers told me that chances of this feature being 
implemented are fairly slim and he suggested that I discuss the feature 
request in the devel mailing list. I talked to a few tax accountants and they 
all consider this feature VERY fundamental. 

Gnucash already has a feature to automatically calculated sales or VAT tax per 
customer. But that feature does not help if you have anonymous customers 
(e.g. super market customers) or if you have a lot of customers (more than 
can be managed in Gnucash).

What do you think? Who else would like to have this feature? 

Regards,
-- 
Oliver König