[GNC-dev] Gnucash and the UK's "Making Tax Digital" initiative

[Mike Evans]

Hello all.  

After a hiatus I have successfully interacted with the HMRC API for a test account to post earning & expenses using python.  None of it is joined up yet to: create|query a business, post and query data about that business but my "tests" appear to work as individual pieces.

I haven't yet queried GnuCash for the data either but I can confirm that the HMRC API works for submitting self employed account data.  I've not looked at the VAT part, because I'm not VAT registered, so...

A minimal json data set for a self-employed quarterly submission looks like:

 json_data = {
        "from": "2017-04-06",
        "to": "2017-07-04",
        "incomes": {
        "turnover": {
          "amount": 100.25
        },
        "other": {
          "amount": 100.25
        }
        },
        "consolidatedExpenses": 100.25
        }

and that's it.  That's the example data from: https://developer.service.hmrc.gov.uk/api-documentation/docs/api/service/self-assessment-api/2.0#selfemployment-business_create-a-selfemployment-periodic-update_post_accordion

Doing a query on the same period returns: 

{u'to': u'2017-07-04', u'consolidatedExpenses': 100.25, u'from': u'2017-04-06', u'incomes': {u'other': {u'amount': 100.25}, u'turnover': {u'amount': 100.25}}}

You can of course provide detailed account data but I never have in past submissions.  These data should be easy to pull out of GnuCash with the (probably augmented) Python bindings to satisfy HMRC each quarter. I guess this could be incorporated into GnuCash as a C++ module at some point but I'll leave that that others more committed. Lest I be committed.

I'll stick the code on GitHub in a while.  It's very much just code to test the connection with a some test POSTs and GETs.  I have lots of cleaning up and comments to add before it's publicly viewable. Tomorrow maybe.

I'm still thinking how to keep the secret, even though HMRC have apparently relaxed that requirement. Ideas welcome on that, maybe a json request from gnucash.org, I know the request code will still be public however, that's the part that needs more_thought&more_input.

Python because it's easy to do quick tests, Sorry Derek. :)

Mike E

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