[GNC] UK VAT and "Making Tax Digital"

[Christopher Lam]

Hi Maf

I agree your asset purchases are not going to be accounted for in the
current iteration. This was not thought of during the design.

A short workable answer is to record this asset purchase as an expense, and
immediately create an expense->asset transaction which will satisfy your
VAT requirements and still use the report as it stands. I'm sorry this is
clunky, and the next para explains why

The longer answer was that every VAT/GST related transaction ie.
sales/purchases, record VAT, and periodic submission would need a
transaction of at least 3 splits... moreover we'd need to determine, as
simply as possible, whether it is a purchase or a sale. Hence the decision
made to consider Income split as sales and Expense split as purchases, and
determine vat/gst-split  as asset/liability as well. This allowed a complex
5-split transaction involving both
sales/purchase/vat-collected-on-sales/vat-paid-on-purchases as illustrated
in https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Alternate_Australian_GST_setup and
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/rpt_standardrpts.html#rpt_gst_statement
.

An alternate strategy *could* be used to determine sales vs purchases, vat
collected vs paid; e.g. use Business Features (which would then force the
user to use invoices/bills for *all* vat/gst purchases, IMHO undesirable!).
The difficult part is to determine a consistent strategy which is
acceptable to users worldwide, and does not inconvenience too much.

Sorry for long answer, hope is informative. If you have a better strategy
to offer, to account for your Asset:Bank -> Asset:CapitalAssets +
VAT:Paid-on-Purchases use cases, I'm all ears! Meanwhile the short
workaround above *may* be an acceptable solution for the current reports...

(w.r.t. CSV output: the following replacement .scm files can produce
something similar)
https://raw
.githubusercontent.com/christopherlam/gnucash/maint-export-csv/gnucash/report/standard-reports/transaction.scm
https://raw
.githubusercontent.com/christopherlam/gnucash/maint-export-csv/gnucash/report/standard-reports/income-gst-statement.scm

On Tue, 30 Apr 2019 at 13:37, Maf. King <maf at chilwell.net> wrote:

> Hi Christopher.
>
> Finally got round to completing my final quarter VAT return with the
> manual
> error-prone process of typing 7 numbers into boxes on the HMRC website.
>
> I'm now trying to make the Income & GST report give me sensible numbers
> that
> match my existing saved transaction reports and struggling with one thing.
>
> It may well be how I've got my tree set up that's causing my problem.  The
> GST
> report doesn't allow to  include transactions to asset accounts.
>
> Under UK tax law, if I buy something of lasting value, eg some machine,
> for
> example, it is not an expense but a transfer to Asset:CapitalEquipment.
>  But
> the VAT is claimable straight away and so the transaction (for the VAT
> return)
> should be included in the Net Purchases & Tax on Purchases column.
>
> any advice?
>
> is your CSV output intending to be made from the GST report codebase in
> some
> way?
>
> The bridging spreadsheet I have will be quite happy to read from
> ~/somewhere/somefile.csv
>
> my test file is just :
> Box1,1234.56
> Box2, 0.00
> (box 3 is calculated from box1+box2 so not included)
> Box4, 321.98
> etc to include box 6,7,8,9
>
> and the spreadsheet will read that and populate new data into the fields
> each
> time it is run.
>
> the only other thing that might be nice to include in the CSV output is
> the
> date period, but I haven't tested that for format etc yet.
>
>
> I'm not signed up for the -devel list, can do so if you'd prefer to keep
> this
> off -user for now.
>
> thanks & best regards,
> Maf.
>
>
>
> On Thursday, 11 April 2019 11:08:27 BST Maf. King wrote:
> > On Thursday, 11 April 2019 04:48:31 BST Christopher Lam wrote:
> > > 3.5 is out and I promised to offer CSV output. Has anyone confirmed the
> > > exact CSV (or JSON)  format desired by their *bridging* software?
> > >
> > > Please be aware that direct communication to HMRC is best done by
> bridging
> > > software outside gnucash. It'll be a nice project for anyone to do in
> > > python or similar.
> >
> > Hi Christopher,
> >
> > Thanks for looking at this again.
> >
> > I'll probably be looking at this next week or so.   I'll have to
> complete my
> > lasts "traditional" VAT return by around the end of the month.  For the
> > quarter ending 30th June, I'll report to HMRC towards the end of July,
> and
> > be in the first tranche of submittors.
> >
> > I plan to use a spreadsheet bridge that I found for Libre office.
> >
> > seems that the sheet as presented requires linking cells from a source
> > report spreadsheet.
> >
> > User guide is here explaining how to do it
> >
> > http://www.chm-software.co.uk/userguide/
> >
> > (no relationship or recommendation implied)
> >
> > I'm thinking that I might be able to adapt their sheet to directly take a
> > CSV input to named cells in some way.  It is only about half a dozen
> > numbers that are needed.
> >
> > Of course, if any other users have come across a more elegant solution,
> feel
> > free to chime in!
> >
> > Maf.
>
>
> --
> Maf. King
> PGP Key fingerprint = 8D68 A91F 733B 2C1F 43B7  2B7C E591 E8E1 0DE7 C542
>
>
>
>
>
>