identifying sales tax

[Andrew Sackville-West]

bri wrote:
> how are people handling sales tax? now that the IRS allows us to deduct 
> sales tax on items purchased, i want to keep track of it. my first take 
> was to do a split - $x to the actual expense category, then the $x that 
> was the sales tax from the receipt. that would work great, but then i 
> got to thinking... that means that my totals in the expense categories 
> are 'wrong'. not that i'm overly anal about whether i spent $100 on 
> something or $108.25 but.... it would add up and does create an 
> inconsistency.
> 
> so is there another way to do it? i looked briefly but couldn't tell - 
> can i do a report (i know.. i can probably write my own.. :-) that pulls 
> out all transactions/splits that have 'sales tax' in the description? 
> that way, i could still do a split, 1 w/ the sales tax amount and the 
> other with the rest of the price, both going to the expense category, 
> but the sales tax would be identified so that i could run a report at 
> the end of the year that would add it all up.
> 
> thoughts? has anyone else solved this?

I think you could do a couple things.

1. just adjust all your budget amounts down bythe sales tax... then the 
$100 would line up withour budgets properly.

2. you could put a "tax" sub-account under every account then you could 
report with or without the tax as youlike.

3, or this wacky one. create both an income and an expense account 
called "Sales tax". then enter your transaction like this (assuming a check)
		credit		debit
Groceries	108.25
checking			108.25
sales tax in	8.25
sales tax out			8.25

that way you record 108.25 for grceries expense and 8.25 for sales tax 
expense, but you offset with the income expense. Your net balances, but 
it could screw with other reports that don;t include the income side.

my .02, good luck.

A
> 
> thx.bri.
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>