Automatic VAT/GST on purchases?

[Maf. King]

On Sunday 09 July 2006 14:10, Mark Blakeney wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am a [ex-]Quicken user looking to move to gnucash or kmymoney and have
> a question about gnucash. Is it possible to set up automatic VAT/GST
> apportioning on purchases? If so, then sometimes the GST must be taken
> out of the gross amount entered, other times then the GST must be added
> to the net amount entered (dependent on the particular primary expense
> account entered).
>
> There is a gnucash FAQ on how to handle GST tracking and it mentions
> that you can set up a tax table for "GST Payable" which will
> automatically apportion the GST owed on invoices and collate the tax
> owed, but I can't work out how to do the analogous operation on
> payments? Having this for payments is more important because you must
> enter a lot of them and having to manually calculate and split out the
> GST is onerous and error prone. BTW, kmymoney has automatic VAT/GST
> splits for both income and expenses. In both cases the split can be
> based on net or gross amounts.

Hi Mark,

The only way that VAT/GST can be apportioned automatically in the 1.8.x series 
of GC is through the "business subsystem".

That means running a full-on A/P (bills you need to pay) or A/R (invoices your 
clients need to pay) setup, which may be overkill for your needs. GC handles 
varying tax rates - eg 17.5% standard rate,  5% reduced rate for electricity 
etc, or 0% for books etc. defaults rates are set on a per-expense-account 
basis. 

The general registers don't do anything like this.  :-(

I don't know if that is different in the 1.9 series (surely 2.0 soon?)

HTH,
Maf.