Sales tax and GST (Goods and Services Tax)

[Geert Janssens]

On Tuesday 28 June 2016 16:58:27 Aaron Laws wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 12:01 AM, John <john535458 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I can't see how to set up GNUCASH to track transaction taxes like
> > Sales Tax and GST.
> > 
> > Is it possible?
> > 
> > Thanks
> > John
> 
> I don't think it can be done automatically as gnucash doesn't know
> what is taxable at what rate.

That's what the business features are for. It's a trade-off though. If you want to track taxes 
you will need to enter invoices and bills as well. You can set up tax tables for various tax rates 
and assign default tax tables per vendor or customer. Then when you enter invoices and bills, 
gnucash will suggest that default tax table for each entry on the document. You can override 
it at all times if some lines don't follow the default. This is documented in the gnucash 
documentation under "Accounts Receivable" and "Accounts Payable".

If the overhead of tracking invoices/bills/payments is overkill, you will indeed have to do it 
manually. As Aaron suggests, you can use multi-split transactions to do so.

Regards,

Geert