[GNC] Reporting combinations of accounts

[Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton]

Thanks Maf,

You're right it's not a big deal, there aren't many additional calculations
to do, and they're easy calculations. But hey, GC is an accounting system
and it can do the sums needed for our tax reports, so I thought the most
elegant solution is to have GC do those calculations. If it can't,  OK I'll
just do them outside GC. That's not a deal breaker for using GC.

The same principles apply to other joint investments, e.g. in finance
markets or in property that you let (you don't have to establish a separate
business to buy and let property). In our case there are 7 categories of
joint income and expenditure that we have to split 50:50. Still, manually
calculating (amount=A + 0.5 * B) fourteen times isn't such a big deal.

Your three book solution sounds good, but at the moment I keep "me", "her"
and "us" all in one book and I think I'll keep it that way. Partly, we
consider it all "ours" anyway, and one book makes it possible to have an
overview of everything we have and do. Plus all our separate income goes
into the same joint account, so one book makes it easier to handle income.
Plus the UK government allows unlimited "gifts" to be made between partners
without being reported, and having everything in one book makes it easier
to transfer directly between any accounts regardless of the "owners",
without having to record it as an expense from one book and an income to
another.

The original questioner suggested a transaction to split tax-reportable
joint accounts on the last day of the tax year. I'm thinking this could be
done as a scheduled transaction repeating at the end of each tax year. But
as far as I can see, you can't schedule a transaction to transfer 50% of
the balance of account A to account B and 50% to C. On the other hand you
can schedule to transfer X/2 from A to B and X/2 from A to C, and then
enter X. Then I'd have 7 values of X to enter by looking at current
balances. Reasonably easy, albeit cumbersome, and I'd get complete accurate
tax reports directly out of GC.

Other suggestions welcome!

Ruaraidh


On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 09:16, Maf. King <maf at chilwell.net> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 29 April 2020 23:51:13 BST Ruaraidh wrote:
> > I'm in the UK where married couples are taxed separately and have to file
> > separately. I'm not a tax expert, but I've just googled it and find
> > confirmation on both government and accountants' web sites: husbands and
> > wives (the words used on the web sites - I'm not sure about other types
> of
> > couple) have been taxed independently since 1990.
> >
> > So, interestingly, the original GnuCash question seems irrelevant in the
> > USA, but still relevant here. You are lucky!
> >
>
>
> Hi Ruaraidh,
>
> Until a few years ago, my wife and I were both required to submit
> returns.
> There were some individual items to report and some "joint" items.
>
> I had 3 books in GC - Me, Her, Us.
>
> I ran the income / expense etc reports for Me, and then Us.
>
> divide the numbers from Us by 2 and add that to the totals from Me to get
> to
> what is to be reported on the tax return.   Generally, I think it was only
> bank interest that needed to be split, so in reality only a couple of
> calculations were needed.  YMMV, of course.
>
> HTH,
> Maf.
>
>
>
>