interesting accounting problem - how to handle

[John Edwards]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> Yawar Amin <yawar.amin at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 2010-04-28, at 18:51, Jay Ridgley wrote:
>>> Folks,
>>>
>>> My bank made an error and posted a credit card payment to my mortgage principle
>>> and after I discovered it and drew it to their attention, have decided to leave the extra principle applied AND credit my credit card.
>>>
>>> Now the question I have is, what is the other leg of the transaction, I know to credit my mortgage
>>
>> You mean debit your liability, right?
>>
>>> liability but the offset comes from which account?
>>
>> Credit an equity account (e.g. Equity:OutsideContributions), maybe?
>
> An accountant or tax attorney would have to answer you officially, but I
> would think this would be considered Income:Gifts

I don't like putting it in income, because there wasn't really
anything done for it. That said, if the bank is going to report it to
the tax authorities as income to you, then that's where you would need
to put it.

In the absence of tax implications, my inclination would be to list it
as a contra-expense account (Bank Error refund), that would end up
reducing the value of Bank Charges. If you aren't interested in your
total bank charges without this error correction, then you could apply
it directly to bank charges.0

John

-- 
John Edwards
"You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against
incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell