GnuCash and Swedish accounting legislation

[GWB]

Draug,

To echo Liz and Michael, I would be fascinated to see the list of
software that meets the requirements of the Swedish legislation from
the Swedish tax authority itself.  Have you asked them for a list, and
could you share that information with the gnucash mailing list?  I
could send them an email, but my Swedish is not that good.

In any event, you might be able to describe to them what Liz has
explained above (which seems brilliant), and ask them to consider the
end of quarter (or month or year) CD as the enduring copy.  Or do a
version of what investing firms do: produce a yearly enduring copy on
CD, (report) and then produce quarterly revisions on CD.  The
quarterly revisions would be nothing more than the GnuCash file report
with whatever corrections and updates you entered in the the last 3
months.  This gives auditors something to work with, an original and
then corrected copies.

Or, perhaps don't ask, and just do it.  They may tell you the old
Prussian proverb applies, "What is not explicitly allowed is strictly
forbidden".  You can then reply: "It is better to ask forgiveness than
permission".  Or not; I have only worked slightly with US, UK, NZ and
Caribbean accounts, and I'm not an accountant nor a lawyer.  So check
with a few of those who know your jurisdiction.

Being a Swedish citizen, I think you would be entirely justified to
ask the tax authority to supply you the software that meets their
requirements for free.  You could also point out that you have made a
signifigant investment of time in using GnuCash and other financial
software which their legislation has rendered unusable.

It sounds as if Sweden is trying to implement similar requirements as
the Dodd Frank legislation in the United States.  That's too bad.  It
just makes more work for honest people, and rewards those (sometimes
less honest) types who can afford to spend money on superficial
compliance that does little or nothing to improve transparency (and
pretty much the same effect Liz describes with the Australian Taxation
Office).

Gordon



On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 2:46 PM, Liz <edodd at billiau.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Jan 2016 21:26:48 +0100
> Draug <draug at kolabnow.com> wrote:
>
>> I've replied with some more questions regarding where they draw the
>> line, as I pointed out pretty much everything can be edited or redone
>> if you want to. But it still seems I'm out of luck using GnuCash for
>> my company. Is there anything I can do in GnuCash to satisfy the
>> demands of the Swedish accounting legislation? Otherwise I might have
>> to redo all my accounting in some other program..
>
>
>
> Every week, or other period, burn a copy of your data file(s) to a CD-R.
> Call the latest one your enduring copy.
>
> Disclaimer: I live in Australia, and if someone makes a stupid law, we
> work around it, because that is our culture. This contributes to the
> most complex tax system devised as the ATO chases intelligent people
> working out ways not to pay their share.
>
> Liz
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