Oh dear, it turns out we don't get VAT back...

[Keith A. Milner]

On Thursday 16 Jun 2011 10:14:55 edpsystems wrote:
> Hi again,
> 
> Re: the biscuits and bleach, I've been sticking them in generalised
> accounts for groceries and cleaning, rather than having a
> groceries:biscuits account and a  cleaning:bleach account. Perhaps that
> would make my costs more, er, analysable?
> 
> And for the VAT thingies, I think I'll put it down to experience and start
> putting the bills in gross for the 2nd half of 2011. Thanks for your help
> though!!

OK, I see what you're trying to do.

In line with previous posts, I suspect the best bet if you want to change them 
would be to unpost and repost the bills. You really don't want to be deleting 
them, especially if you've done any reconciliation, etc.

What I would do (and this applies to both amending old bills and new ones if 
you wish to capture the tax amount separately) is create a line item for VAT 
within the same account as the main item. You can enter formula into the 
Gnucash amount boxes, so if the item was 10 Euros plus 4% VAT you can enter 
10*.04 into the tax line and it will caclulate the value for you.

I'm not sure of the regulations regarding Dental services in Spain, but one 
downside of registering for VAT may be that you have to start changing VAT on 
sales. If you customers are all VAT registered companies too then they will 
probably not mind this at all, but if they aren't (which is, I suspect, the 
case here), then they will end up with a higher bill. Obviously your 
Accountant is the one to ask here.

Cheers,


-- 
Keith A. Milner