[GNC] Reporting transactions

[Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton]

Indeed the government's contribution appears correctly as income however
it's recorded, as it is a genuine income. No problem there. The personal
contribution is not an income as it doesn't increase my net worth - it's
just a transfer from one account to another.  And you are right,
the government contribution is not taxable income and doesn't go in the tax
report as an income.

All OK so far.

But we still have to include the personal and government contributions in
the tax report. I'm not sure the reason is relevant, but for what it's
worth, they use this information to adjust the threshold between basic rate
and higher rate tax.

Perhaps I'm coming at it from the wrong angle. It's not right to expect
these contributions to appear in a report of income and expenses. Perhaps I
need a separate transaction report.

Thanks everyone for your patience, as I try to learn what GnuCash can do!

On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 15:28, Christopher Lam <christopher.lck at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 14:15, Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton <
> ruaraidh.sh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In my reply I replaced your "Income:Me" with "Assets:my bank account". The
>> point is that, when the SIPP is in the same GC file as my other assets,
>> the
>> transaction is from one asset (the bank account I used to pay into the
>> SIPP) to another asset (my SIPP). It's not from an income account to the
>> SIPP, so it can't appear in a report of income.
>>
>
> It *can and should* appear in an Income report; you are enjoying a
> government contribution and your net worth increases as a result. It should
> be present in your main datafile. It's not taxable income, so, you are
> allowed to ignore it in your annual returns.
>
>
>> If I keep the SIPP in a separate dedicated GC file, then no problem: my
>> contribution appears in the main GC file as an expense against my bank
>> account and as an income in the SIPP GC file. I just wondered if there was
>> a way of keeping all assets in one file.
>>
>
> Generally you wouldn't use two files for this case.
>