Dates of invoice, transaction and sales tax

[Maf. King]

On Saturday 16 October 2010 17:25:30 Hendrik van Antwerpen wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm breaking my head over all the dates involved in invoicing and sales
> tax payment. I'll describe the desired situation first, for the example
> of buying Product for EUR119 (EUR100 expense and EUR19 sales tax).
>
> Amounts:
> - Expense EUR100
> - Sales tax EUR19 (can be reclaimed)
>
> The dates involved:
> - The buy happened on the 20th of August 2010 (transaction date).
> - The invoice was send (late) on the 2nd of October 2010 (invoice date).
> - Our book year '10-'11 starts on the 1st of September 2010.
> - The sales tax period are in quarters, Q4 starts the 1st of October 2010.
>
> Sales taxes have to be reported in the period of the invoice date, in
> this case Q4.
>
> What I got:
> - When I create an bill, I set the open date to the invoice date.
> - The entry in the bill I give the transaction date.
> - When I post the bill, all transactions get the invoice date. I could
> not find a  difference between accumulating splits or not.
> - I found no way to report the tax entries in invoice date.
>
> Desired result:
> - The entry in my expense account should belong to the book year
> '09-'10, so it should have the transaction date.
> - The sales tax entry should be on the transaction date but should be
> reported in a Q4 report because of the invoice date.
>
> If someone knows a solution for this, I would be happy. If a patch to
> gnucash could help on this, I could do some hacking too.
>
> Regards,
> Hendrik

Hi Hendrik,

Don't know how you can model this transaction in GC, but my understanding of 
UK tax law, (and I believe that it is similar across the EU following various 
recent "harmonisation" changes) is that the Invoice Date is also known as 
the "tax date", which is when the transaction happened as far as the 
authorities are concerned. Supply dates don't matter.

what I'm trying to say is that because the invoice was dated in your book year 
10-11, it should go to the total expenses of that year (and Q4 VAT), 
regardless of when you took possesion of the goods you bought, and regardless 
of when money changed hands (this is called accrual accounting in the UK).

Not sure if that helps you out or not, and  please bear in mind that IANAA 
also IANAL.

Regards,
Maf.