How to best handle Imputation Credit (Australia); Tax related

[prl]

Hi, Michael.

I don't record Imputation Credits* in Gnucash. But then I don't put any 
of my tax through GnuCash, and I don't normally get a payment back from 
my tax. I just pay any excess owing to the ATO into an Expenses:Tax 
account. But I only ever have a few hundred dollars in imputation 
credits anyway. If you have a large amount relative to your income, then 
it may be worth the effort tracking it.

The tax arrangements for superannuation pensions are too complicated for 
me to try to deal with them through GnuCash in any way that comes close 
to reflecting reality. I only get an annual statement of the tax on my 
pension anyway (at the end of the FY). I just budget for what I guess 
I'll have to pay the ATO at the end of the year.

You could make an Asset:Imputation Credit account, pay into it when you 
get your dividend statements, and regard some (or all) of your tax 
return cheque as having come from that from that account, and do a split 
payment into the account that you pay the cheque into.

On the Tax Related checkbox, I've never seen anything remotely related 
to Australian income tax in Gnucash. But that may be because I've simply 
assumed there won't be anything and haven't looked hard enough :)

* For non-Australian readers, Imputation Credits are effectively an 
allowance for the tax the company has already paid in company tax on 
profits that are being redistributed as dividends. If your marginal 
income tax rate is below the company tax rate, Imputation Credits are 
effectively negative taxation on the dividends.

Cheers,
Peter

On 12/07/13 11:05, Michael Gordon wrote:
> I'm running GnuCash 2.4.13 on Windows 8.
>
> 1. Imputation Credit
> Just starting to enter data and am stuck on how best to handle Imputation
> credit when recording dividend income.
> In Australia, those with low income tax rates can claim back tax that has
> been paid by companies when they declare dividends.
> A dividend statement has three elements:
> Franked amount (the amount on which the company has paid tax)
> Unfranked amount (the amount on which the company has NOT paid tax)
> Imputation or Franking credit (the maximum amount that you may be able to
> claim back from the government when filing your tax return)
>
> So, the cash paid at dividend time is the total of Franked and Unfranked.
> I know that I can record this as a split transaction.
>
> But what to do about the Imputation Credit? As a retiree I get most if not
> all of this so it is a kind of delayed income, but I'd like to keep track
> of it as dividends are paid.
>
> 2. Tax related. This check box appears to be unavailable. Only viable for
> US users, perhaps?
>
> Mike.
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