Employee section of the business menu

[Maf. King]

On Saturday 03 Apr 2004 04:56, Derek Atkins wrote:
> "Maf. King" <maf at chilwell.net> writes:
> > One question though - I am familliar with the A/P and A/R functionality
> > - can I set up tax tables for employees too?
> >
> > EG an employee uses her personal credit card for some business
> > purchase. This purchase needs reimbursing, but also when I record it I
> > want to split the VAT out - just like in the A/P new bill entry
> > process.
> >
> > Or is the intention more like: employee submits a [daily | weekly |
> > monthly] expenses claim and then that is recorded as a n-line split
> > transaction?
>
> The tax table of an employee expense voucher work the exact same way
> as the tax table of a vendor bill.  You can treat them the same.

Thanks, Derek, 

Finally had some time to dig a bit deeper into this - 

If I create a new expense voucher, there is no tax-table field in the 
register section - i have 

Date | In | Description | Action | Expense Account | Quantity | Unit Price | 
Subtotal | Billable? | Payment

- which all make sense and do what I expect, but in the New Bill section I 
get additional fields Taxable? | Tax Included? | Tax Table

How do I enable the tax table for the employees section? File -> Properties 
will only let me set a default tax table for [Customer | Vendor], not 
employee.  I see nothing else in any menu which looks suitable.
I am running 1.8.7 - is this something which has changed in 1.8.8?


> If an employee pays VAT on an expense, they should claim the VAT on
> the expense in the same way that you would claim VAT on a non-employee
> business expense.
>
> -derek

I disagree with what I _think_ you are saying here.  (IANAA, but I have kept 
(small) business accounts for 10 years).
In the UK, it is very difficult for a non business entity to register for 
VAT.  If an employee buys something on the behalf of the business, then the 
business refunds the full expense to the employee and then treats the 
transaction as though it was made by the business - similar to A/P with 0 
days credit terms.   The business, not the individual is responsible for 
the VAT calculations and claims.

  
The way I am doing this at the moment (a hang-over from years of working 
with a _very_ old version of Quicken) is to have a liability account for 
employees and entering transactions manually with a split for the VAT 
(Quicken did the VAT tracking automatically), which seems to me much more 
long-wided and error prone than the Gnucash->AP way of doing things, and 
harder to get reports on a per-employee basis.  I think that the expenses 
voucher would be a better way to work, but I really want to avoid manual 
VAT calculations if possible.

Thanks,
Maf.