HST/Sales Tax Question

[Adrien Monteleone]

Melissa,

The only way to get tax calculated automatically without specifically entering it (that I am aware of) is to use the business features. I doubt you want to go through the trouble of defining Walmart, et al as vendors and then entering, posting, and paying ‘invoices’ for each purchase you make.

I track sales tax separately for purchases as well, even split amongst the state and local rate. There’s really no easy way to do that. I just enter each transaction line by line as it appears on my receipts.

You have it a bit easier since you always know what your tax rate is and it’s always inclusive. Enter the line items for a Walmart purchase as you normally would, then enter another line item for HST, set to post to an expense account for HST, such as Expenses:Taxes:HST. Since GnuCash can do some basic math for you, there are a few ways you can calculate the HST for the split.

You can enter a split line for the item/service purchased with value ‘amount’ in this example ’10.00’. (and assuming your example of 13% HST)

amount - amount / 1 + HST rate
ex: 10.00-10.00/1.13

= 1.15

and then use your arrow key to move back up to the actual expense line and add ‘-1.15’ after it resulting in 8.85.

Or, and this might be easier for purchases with more than one expense split so you accurately distribute the HST:

enter every expense split like so:

amount / 1 + HST rate
ex: 10.00/1.13

= 8.85

If you start your transactions with the total spent as a credit to whichever asset (say checking or cash account) you paid with, this will leave you with an unallocated split line of 1.15, which is the HST for that item. As you enter more items, that unallocated split will grow. When finished, you can simply assign that unallocated split line to the aforementioned Expenses:Taxes:HST account, and you’re balanced. If you are in the habit of entering the asset credit (payment) line last, enter it and you’ll see the unallocated debit (expense) split show up, then simply assign it to the HST expense account.

Hope that helps,

Adrien


> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 14
> Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2017 17:48:03 +0000
> From: Melissa lutz <sweet_mel_lisa at hotmail.com>
> To: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
> Cc: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: Re: Payroll Question
> Message-ID:
> 	<BLUPR08MB12037D692727DBB2B562DF18CC080 at BLUPR08MB1203.namprd08.prod.outlook.com>
> 	
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Hi Derek,
> 
> 
> I am trying to use GnuCash for tax season and was wondering if I can set an automatic tax for my entrees or if I'll have to type it all in manually. For example; Expenses: Supplies: Walmart: from checking account: 10.00. Can i have it automatically take 13% HST into another section to keep track of what I've spent in HST? I'm looking at the tax table for Sales but I don't know if it'll do anything for purchases. Manually I can enter a split transaction and the HST goes to taxes HST but with the amount of purchases I'm looking for a faster way.
> 
> 
> Thank you for your help!
> 
> 
> Melissa