Tracking multiple taxes and reporting on P&L

[Jade]

Hi, love the product but I have 2 problems that are sort of related so am dealing with both here. I've also included some suggestions that might help in a future release??

First, as a small business I am required to track 2 taxes we collect on income and 1 tax that is paid on expenses to enable me to calculate the remittances required. The tax field on the transaction entry is very handy but only allows me to track one tax. Could a second tax field be added (e.g. tax 1, tax 2) with the same pull down options as currently available? It would also be nice to be able to name the tax but default field names would also work.

e.g.

income 20.00 Tax-1 1.20 collected Tax-2 1.50 collected

or

expense 20.00 Tax-1 1.20 paid Tax-2 00.00

Tax report would be in the same format but show the GROSS, TAX-1, TAX-2, TOTAL. Note: It would also be very nice to be able to run the tax reports with the option

Where: Project equals/contains..... XXXXXX


I currently use the comment field to show both taxes separately , put the total of both in the tax field. Then I run a query report, manually add the 2 taxes to get my individual totals and balance it to the tax report total. I suppose I could create individual transactions and group them but that seems much more cumbersome for the user than the option of multiple tax fields.


This leads me to the other part of my problem. When I use the tax field (as above) and then run a P&L report the tax amounts are still included in the totals. Our system requires that the expenses and income be shown excluding the taxes. (Once taxes are calculated and remitted they are no longer part of income/expense for income tax purposes). Is there a way to do this? Currently I can not find a good way to even run a report or query which would allow me to determine how much tax applies to each account (e.g. $20.00 tax was paid over 3 months for telephone, so I would manually adjust my telephone total to reflect the total less the taxes for income tax reporting purposes).

Could there be a preference setting which would enable you to choose whether taxes should be included in P&L totals or not?

If I can't find a way around this I guess I will have to use grouped transactions instead. Anyone have similar issues? Thanks.

 

[stanbusk]

In fact, using individual transactions and grouping is the right way to go right now. It is the only workaround for all the issues you have. The only problem is that it is a bit more time consuming to do it that way. In a future, because of popular request we will allow creating groups/splits directly.

In case you want to use built-in tax functionality, do you mean we have to use for example Tax 1 and Tax 2 to the list?

 

[Jade]

Hi Stan, thanks for the incredibly quick reply and consideration regarding this. I've been away so am getting back to it now. Until the change is made, I will use the individual transaction method as you indicated.

As to your question: "In case you want to use built-in tax functionality, do you mean we have to use for example Tax 1 and Tax 2 to the list?"

There may be a better way to handle this, but my thoughts were to change the transaction panel to contain 2 separate fields for TAX, I had called them TAX1 and TAX2 just as an example. Currently the panel has one TAX field called TAXES: I would like a field to contain each tax, beside each of those fields I would like the same pull down description field that is currently there (the field choices are paid, refundable and collected). That would allow me to have one transaction but show each tax applied to it. The tax report would then reflect one transaction, but show both taxes separately in the applicable report.

Again, for people in my situation to gain full benefit from this, we need to be able to exclude the tax amounts from the transaction totals in the p&l and balance sheet reports.

I would think it would only be businesses who want to be able to subtract the totals in the reports because we actually remit the tax to government deptartments. However, individuals may track the amount they spend on taxes for information, but since they do not make a remittance, they would still include this amount as part of their expense.

Let me know if I've missed the mark on my explanation. Thanks again for all your help.

 

[stanbusk]

Ok, I take note.