Canada Pension Plan

[Edward Doolittle]

OK, thanks everyone for the enlightening discussion. I agree that I should
treat CPP payments as an expense. I should also look for some other tool to
help me with retirement planning, and use GnuCash as a source of some of
the data to input into that tool.

One minor issue: I tried deleting the asset account I was using to hold my
CPP contributions, assuming that I would have an opportunity to move all
the transactions at once to an expense account. I was given the opportunity
to move the transactions, but not to any expense account, only to asset
accounts IIRC. Isn't that a bit limiting? I ended up patiently moving each
transaction by hand.

On 20 February 2015 at 10:38, Mike or Penny Novack <
stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> wrote:

> This is really just a special case or a more general accounting problem,
> namely, contingent assets and contingent liabilities. The problem with
> these assets or liabilities is that they depend on events which might or
> might not occur, and so have no well defined Balance Sheet value.
>
> If looking at a formal financial report done by auditors, we would see
> information about "contingencies" appearing as note in the report. In other
> words, notes that explained that there were things, possibly big things,
> not appearing in the Balance Sheet.
>
> Back to the original question, how to treat the payments into the
> government program. I'd treat that as an expense for now,with no balance
> sheet asset in exchange. Your "books"are (or should be) just part of your
> financial planning. The calculations for that should be using tools made
> for that purpose, not an accounting package.
>
> To forestall questions, on a personal level, an example of a contingent
> liability might be "co-signer on  a loan".  You wouldn't expect to see that
> on your Balance Sheet but it is of significance to your overall financial
> situation.
>
> Michael D Novack
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>



-- 
Edward Doolittle
Associate Professor of Mathematics
First Nations University of Canada
1 First Nations Way, Regina SK S4S 7K2

« Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents
et un ingrat. »
-- Louis XIV, dans Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, Chap. XXVI