Updated 2012 US Tax Info

Alex Aycinena alex.aycinena at gmail.com
Tue Feb 5 16:25:09 EST 2013


As I have done in past years, I have updated the data in GnuCash to
reflect changes to US Income Tax Forms and Schedules for 2012. These
are not extremely significant changes but if you are subject to US
Income Tax reporting requirements and use GnuCash to aid in preparing
your US income tax returns, you may wish to have access to the
updates.

The changes are minor and are to:

- Individuals: Schedule C, Schedule C-EZ, Schedule E, Schedule F, Form 8863
- Partnerships: Form 1065, Schedule F
- Corporation: Form 1120
- S Corporation: Form 1120S, Schedule K-1

There is no new release available at this time to get these updates.
If you use these forms and schedules, since tax time in the US is upon
us now, if want to get the updates there is a way that you can get
just the US Tax updates into your existing GnuCash installation, as
follows:

Prerequisites: You must have at least 2.3.8, or later, installed for
the following to work. If not, THIS WON'T WORK, so don't do it. (If
you can't upgrade using your distribution's package manager to at
least this level, your only other choice is to build from source.) You
also must have administrative/root privileges on your system.

1. Determine where GnuCash files are installed on your system,
specifically the file: 'txf.scm'. For example, on my linux system, it
is located in '/usr/share/gnucash/scm/' and is owned by 'root'. The
location may be different for a different linux distribution or if you
are using Windows or a Mac.

2. Exit GnuCash if it is running. As 'root' (or 'admin'), locate and
change the name of the existing 'txf.scm' file to 'txf.scm.orig'
noting its ownership and permissions (for linux: su -; cd
/usr/share/gnucash/scm; ls -al; rename txf.scm txf.scm.orig. txf.scm;
ls -al).

3. As your regular user, with your Internet browser, go to
'svn.gnucash.org/trac/browser/gnucash/branches/2.4/src/tax/us/' and
right-click on and save 'txf.scm' somewhere (e.g., for linux:
/home/user-name/Downloads). If you use the version of GnuCash in
trunk, the files are identical.

4. As 'root' (or 'admin'),  move the downloaded 'txf.scm' file to the
location where 'txf.scm.orig' is located and make sure its ownership
and permissions are the same as the original file (for linux: mv
/home/user-name/Downloads/txf.scm /usr/share/gnucash/scm/txf.scm; ls
-al; chown root:root /usr/share/gnucash/scm/txf.scm; ls -al; chmod g-w
/usr/share/gnucash/scm/txf.scm; ls -al).

5. Restart GnuCash and confirm that the new file is being used
properly by selecting Edit->Tax Report Options and confirming that the
dialog works properly. Specifically, test it by temporarily setting
Tax Type as 'Individual, ...' if it is not that already, selecting
'Income' for 'Accounts', selecting some random income account, if it
is not already selected as 'Tax Related', do so, scrolling down to
'Sched C Gross receipts or sales' and selecting it, then scrolling in
the lower area to see the 'Form Line Data' and if it says '2012 - now
1' everything is fine. Click 'Cancel' so that no changes are made to
your data from the test.

Note that if you have any difficulties you can exit GnuCash, delete
the downloaded 'txf.scm', rename 'txf.scm.orig' back to the way it was
before and restart GnuCash to be back where you were.

Also, if you do any upgrades to your existing installation, or
re-installs, after these steps, to a release that is version 2.4.11 or
lower (say, for example, from 2.4.10 to 2.4.11), you will have to redo
these steps.

Regards,

Alex


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