[GNC] Accounting Question re Balance Sheet

[Adrien Monteleone]

I think you'll have issues if you try to have different account types 
between parents and children. I vaguely recall a thread about that a few 
years ago. (And I might have even done it once myself)

Some folks were making Top Level accounts for various properties and 
duplicating other parts of the tree under each. And I think they found 
some bugs as a result, but those bugs wouldn't be resolved, because the 
answer in the case you need to go that far is to make separate books for 
each property and then have a 'company/consolidated book' that takes 
bottom-line numbers from the individual property books.

If your needs aren't that complicated, there is nothing wrong with 
contra-accounts however. Accountants use them fairly regularly.

Regards,
Adrien

On 1/21/22 12:44 PM, paul at kroitor.ca wrote:
> Thanks for this -- and the other replies -- it's just what I was looking
> for.
> 
> I neglected to make clear that my question was entirely about the CoA
> structure; I am very clear about the tax reporting requirements and
> consequences.
> 
> I like the idea of an intermediate-level account for each property, with
> subordinate accounts for the initial purchase and (separately) the annual
> valuation adjustments.
> 
> It spawns a second question: what if I add the expected tax hit and sales
> costs as sub-accounts under this same mid-level Asset account:
> - Property 1
>      - Purchase
>      - Value Adjustment
>      - Anticipated taxes on sale
>      - Anticipated sales costs
> - Property 2
>      - Purchase
> Etc.
> 
> Obviously the latter two in each property would be negative. Should they be
> asset accounts that contain negative entries? Or marked as Liability
> accounts in GnuCash even though the parent account is an asset?
> 
> The good thing about this is that the parent account value reflects the
> actual net value of the property if it were sold.
> 
> Paul