Australian GST- Time to pay up

[Maf. King]

On Thursday 01 Sep 2005 10:57, Andrew Greig wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am in Australia under the GST (Goods and services Tax) system, and I
> have two accounts for GST in my liabilities section (copied from a
> different program)
>
> GST Received (from sales of product) and owed to the Govt.
> GST Paid     (from purchases I made for the business)
>
> If I am trading well GST received should exceed GST Paid and then I send
> a Cheque to the Gov't for the difference.
>
> So how should I account for that cheque? Apparently, I need to zero the
> two GST accounts, so does that mean I should have an account in Assetts
> called BAS Payments (Business Activity Statement)? Or is the cheque
> account enough to handle it?
>

Well, the transaction I use to pay UK VAT looks something like (viewed in the 
bank account register):
VAT:OutputTax (my sales) :  dep 5000
Bank:Current (the payment): cr:2000
VAT:InputTax (my purchases): cr 3000

That has the effect of reducing what you owe by cancelling out what they owe 
you.


> One of the two accounts above is negative, the other is positive, so if
> I owe the  Gov't then the Liabilities account should be positive? and if
> they owe me (perish the thought) then there should be a -ve amount as
> the difference between the two? IANAA
>

I have VAT:Output (the VAT I have charged) as a liability account, and 
VAT:Input (what I have paid) as an asset.  That way, the VAT parent account 
balance shows the actual total owing at any given point, but I have to do 
some "sign-reversal-in-my-head" when I look at the reports :-(

> I must say, that now that I have been running for a couple of months I
> find this a really good way to handle the books, not the least because I
> no longer have to boot into Windows for anything for my Business.
>

Well, I was in that position, but am presently building my first x86_64 box, 
and now need to find a new viewer for DWG files, as I can't persuade 
lx-viewer to compile (yet...)  Grrr.

Cheers,
Maf.