Tax-related checkbox

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 24 20:41:42 EDT 2009


Don--

I don't think that re-activating the checkbox would be good unless the underlying TXF report problem were fixed. Specifically, when the user simply checked the Tax Related option in the Edit Account window, the TXF report would not include the account at all. Users unaware of the other tax option would wonder (as I did) why the accounts weren't showing up.

I agree that changing this to a text notice would be better. Perhaps even better would be to make the Tax Option dialog accessible on the Edit Account screen. 

David

--- On Tue, 3/24/09, Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Tax-related checkbox
> To: "J. Alex Aycinena" <alex.aycinena at gmail.com>
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 3:01 PM
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 3:31 PM, J. Alex Aycinena
> <alex.aycinena at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
> > > Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:01:36 -0400
> > > From: Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com>
> > > Subject: c
> > > To: Gnucash User Forum
> <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> > > Message-ID:
> > >       
> <d484362e0903240501u4f603ca3g22ecca76b4288b90 at mail.gmail.com>
> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> > >
> > > I'm aware that there was a previous thread on
> the greying-out of the
> > > Tax-related checkbox in the account-editing
> dialog. I just
> > >
> > > - updated to 2.2.9, courtesy Gentoo
> > > - ran across the greyed-out checkbox and had the
> reaction "Why can't I
> > > control 'Tax-related' for this
> account?"
> > > - remembered and reviewed the previous thread
> > >
> > > Would someone knowledgeable please explain the
> rationale for moving
> > control
> > > of the tax-related atrribute to this new
> menu-item/dialog and leaving the
> > > checkbox on the account-editing dialog,
> greyed-out?
> >
> > If by 'this new menu-item/dialog' you are
> referring to Edit->Tax
> > Options, that is not new. Previously it was one of two
> ways to set the
> > 'Tax Related' flag, the other being on the
> account-editing dialog.
> > However, there was only one way to actually assign a
> "Tax Category' to
> > an account, and that was on the Edit->Tax Options
> dialog. To get any
> > usefulness out of the feature you have to actually do
> both: set the
> > flag and assign a category (and of course, run the tax
> report).
> 
> 
> First, thanks very much for the detailed reply.
> 
> I see the issue now. My interest and focus was and is on
> the tax report. I'm
> not interested in the .txf import, because a lot of my
> tax-related income
> and expense items get imported (to Turbotax) from other
> sources. So while I
> sort-of knew the tax categories were there (I think the
> last time I looked
> at that stuff was when I first switched to Gnucash, in the
> 1.8.x days), I
> had no interest in specifying them. So I had no occasion to
> use the Tax
> Options dialog and didn't even know it was there,
> because the 'Tax-related'
> checkboxes did everything I needed.
> 
> There's a virtue to the Tax Options dialog that I just
> realized, as a result
> of reading your message and poking around in the program,
> and that is that
> you can deal with aggregations of accounts at once, making
> them all
> 'Tax-related' of one flavor or another, something
> you can't do with the
> account editing dialog. Nice.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >
> > > It seems to me that the old way was fine and that
> this is a step
> > backwards.
> >
> > The problem before was that by setting the 'Tax
> Related' flag on the
> > 'account-editing dialog' a user could easily
> stop at that point and
> > not realize that he/she still had to use Edit->Tax
> Options to complete
> > the process. In fact it was reported by a user as a
> problem. So a
> > 'quick fix' was to change the tax flag on the
> account-editing dialog
> > to be display-only so that a user has to use the
> Edit->Tax Options
> > dialog to both set the flag and be able at the same
> time to select the
> > category.
> >
> > Realizing that this might be a bit confusing two other
> things were
> > done: the documentation was updated to state that this
> was the case
> > and a tip was added to the greyed out tax flag on the
> account-editing
> > dialog saying this to the user (hover your cursor over
> the greyed out
> > flag for a second or so and it will appear).
> 
> 
> The problem with that is that seeing the thing greyed-out,
> you have no
> motivation to move the cursor over it, and so you don't
> get to see the
> useful information the tooltip provides.
> 
> >
> >
> > > And, with this new method, I think the use of the
> greyed-out checkbox to
> > > indicate the presence or absence of the attribute
> is a particularly bad
> > > idea. The greyed-out checkbox is still grouped
> with the 'placeholder' and
> > > 'hidden' attributes that you can control
> from the edit-account dialog,
> > > suggesting that you can't control
> 'tax-related' for the account you are
> > > editing, which is not true. What is true is that
> we now have two methods
> > of
> > > setting/unsetting account attributes, one for
> 'placeholder' and 'hidden',
> > > another for 'tax-related', without a
> suggestion on the edit-account
> > dialog
> > > that that's the case. I understand the desire
> to indicate the state of
> > the
> > > tax-related attribute on the account-editing
> dialog, but it should be
> > done
> > > in a different manner than the
> 'placeholder' and 'hidden' attributes,
> > since
> > > controlling the attribute is now done differently
> (e.g., "This account is
> > > tax-related" or "This account is not
> tax-related", no checkbox, not
> > greyed
> > > out, and maybe a mention that the attribute can
> be changed via Edit-Tax
> > > Options).
> >
> > You are probably right on the issue of how to display
> it; like I said,
> > it was a quick fix for a UI inconsistency that existed
> with the prior
> > approach. Please feel free to submit a patch to make a
> change if you
> > want to improve it.
> 
> 
> Ok, I will try to do so. I do think this needs improvement,
> though you've
> certainly convinced me that there was a problem that needed
> solving. But I'm
> still not completely convinced that greying-out the
> 'Tax-related' checkbox
> from the account editing dialog is the best solution. For
> example, not
> greying-out, but adding the tooltip might have been
> preferable. Thus, the
> option to set 'Tax-related' with the default
> category (tax-report-only)
> would remain available on the account dialog and the
> tooltip would alert
> people who want to set tax categories that there's more
> to do and how to do
> it.
> 
> Thanks again for the very complete and informative
> response.
> 
> /Don
> 
> >
> >
> > > I do not think this is an improvement, in terms
> of ease-of-use and UI
> > > consistency, but perhaps there's a good
> reason for it that I'm missing,
> > so
> > > I'd like to know what the thinking was on
> this.
> > >
> > > /Don
> > >
> >
> > Well, you may be right looking only from the
> perspective of the
> > account-editing dialog. But from an over all
> standpoint you definitely
> > had a UI inconsistency between the two dialogs if you
> could do the
> > whole job on one and only half the job on the other
> and not realize
> > it. Same on the ease-of-use aspect.
> >
> > If you use the US tax features, I would suggest two
> other things you
> > might want to do.
> >
> > First, display 'Tax info' on your account tab
> (use the down-arrow on
> > the right to select it). This lets you see exactly
> which accounts have
> > been selected as tax-related and to which category
> they've been
> > assigned.
> >
> > Second, the tax report in 2.2.9 has some serious
> deficiencies. The
> > report has been re-written; it's in trunk but has
> not been back-ported
> > to the 2.2 releases. You can get a copy from svn,
> rename your existing
> > copy (just to save it), and put the new one in the
> same place as the
> > old one (it has the same name). When you restart
> gnucash, it will be
> > used in place of the old one when you select the Tax
> Report from the
> > menu. (You can always go back to the old one by
> reversing this
> > process.) If you are interested in trying it and have
> any questions,
> > just let me know.
> >
> > Alex
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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