[GNC] Fwd: Tips for maintining different accounting for different countries?

[James Cook]

> Hello, James:

Thanks, Jim, your responses are helpful.

A couple of follow-up questions about doing cost-basis tracking outside
of GnuCash (either for Jim or for the list):

* When you do cost-basis tracking in a separate spreadsheet, do you have
  a way to reconcile that with what you have in GnuCash, to make sure
  everything's consistent? (I had been hoping to make my life simpler by
  having a single source of truth, though as you point out, my scheme
  may overcomplicate things.)

* I see your point that my scheme is too complicated. But is using
  separate cost-basis spreadsheets simpler than, e.g, using a separate
  set of GnuCash accounts, or even separate GnuCash files if I want to
  keep that stuff really really separate? I guess I'm just wondering
  whether spreadsheets are inherently simpler than GnuCash for some
  accounting tasks.

The rest of my email is just responses; no new questions below this
line.

--

I will look into finding a tax preparer. My employer paid for my 2018
taxes to be done professionally, because that was the year I moved to
Canada and was therefore especially complicated. I was hoping this year
I could just use my 2018 taxes as a template, but there are a couple of
new twists, and after reading your advice I'm reconsidering.

>  > …if I sell a stock, the realized gains for Canada are based on
> adjusted cost
>  > base, but for the US I can decide which instance of the stock I'm
> selling.…
>
> I have done almost all my cost basis tracking outside of GnuCash, in a
> spreadsheet. Consider if this might be the easier way for you also. And,
> remember that you don't have to take advantage of all the complexity
> that the regs permit you.  Why pick specific lots (pro tip, the GnuCash
> docs call them "lots", not "instances") for your sales, instead of using
> a simpler practice like "first-in-first-out" (FIFO)? You are allowed to
> choose to make your life easier.

My concern was that I'm not sure there's a simple way to satisfy both
Canada and the US. Now that you mention it, I guess there's nothing
stopping me from reporting adjusted cost base to the US. That would at
least make my two returns consistent, but I'd have to look into whether
that makes my US return more complicated due to each sell being matched
to multiple buys.

> I recommend turning on GnuCash's currency trading accounts, as described
> in /Trading Accounts/ <https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Trading_Accounts>
> in the GnuCash wiki. If you find out things which that page does not
> explain well, please edit the page to improve it.

Yes, I found the tutorial when I was trying to figure out what that
GnuCash option did. I had not seen the GnuCash wiki page on it, though,
so thanks for that.

> So, I have six accounts for medical expenses: Medical:Spouse A:CAD,
> Medical:Spouse A:USD, Medical:Spouse B:CAD, Medical:Spouse B:USD,
> Medical:Non-deductible:CAD, and Medical:Non-deductible:USD.  It is easy
> to assign each expense to one of the accounts based on what currency it
> is in, who it is for, and whether it is deductible in both countries or
> not. For one Canadian individual return, I export totals from
> Medical:Spouse A:CAD, Medical:Spouse A:USD. For the other Canadian
> individual return, I export totals from both Medical:Spouse B:…
> accounts. For the US joint return, I export totals from both all four
> Medical:Spouse A:… and Medical:Spouse B:… accounts. If there are
> expenses which are deductible in one country but not the other, I
> haven't discovered them, or they aren't significant enough to be worth
> tracking.

Thanks, that is a helpful example. I'm still considering using my idea
for adjustment accounts rather than an account for every combination
when it comes to situations like this. I think the total number of
accounts would end up being similar with both approaches. Your idea is
probably a bit more practical, but I can't resist trying to design
something that scales linearly (rather than exponentially) with the
number of tax juridictions, even though in practice N=2 or 3 and really
I'd need only 2-3 accounts.

> Finally, don't be afraid to start simple and modify as you go. GnuCash
> lets you easily rename accounts and change the hierarchical structure of
> accounts without losing data. If you decide to merge two accounts, or
> split one account into two, then you need to go through every
> transaction in those accounts and reassign them, but that might be a
> surprisingly tractable task. It certainly doesn't require touching every
> transaction.

This last piece of advice is also really helpful. I was wondering how
important it is to get everything right when I start out, but now I feel
a bit bolder about jumping in.

- James