Adrien, thanks for responding. I hope I have some misconceptions that can be easily rectified but a belief in a limited number of splits isn’t one of them.
In order for my notional “Disbursements” account to work the full disbursement before taxes must be debited fully in Disbursements pre-tax in a single transaction (or so I believe). Once it’s there, I have no choice but to do the tax split from Disbursements (again, so I believe) in a second transaction. Those two transactions then led me to the abstraction, confusion, and self-zeroing problems I mentioned in the OP. I’m not sure what you mean about making child accounts under disbursements - Exp:Income Tax is already an account. If I have misunderstood you, please tell me. > I?m sure there are various methods but you can change IRA distributions to be > a parent account. Then make the necessary sub-accounts for the various > distributions. > > You can report on only the total distributions or the individual ones as > needed. > > You also don?t need to make a transaction include only 2 accounts. You can > have as many splits as you like. > > It looks like you?re adding layers and accounts simply by following a 2-split > per transaction artificial limitation. (which does not exist in GnuCash) > > That withholding split can be a part of the original transaction. > > Regards, > Adrien > >> On Oct 1, 2019 w40d274, at 11:49 AM, <orn...@tutanota.com> >> <orn...@tutanota.com> wrote: >> >> I would like to track IRA disbursements. (For those who don't know, an >> Individual Retirement Account is a US category of retirement investments in >> which taxes are not paid until the funds are withdrawn, i.e., "disbursed." >> In our case and these are disbursements from an IRA mutual fund and will be >> re-invested in a taxable mutual fund. >> >> 1. I'm currently using the simplest way - Cr losing IRA mutual fund $100, Dr >> gaining taxable fund $80, Dr withholding tax $20. I keep track of where the >> various distributions are by using the term "Distributions" in the GnuCash >> Description block. That way I can easily find them. >> >> 2. I tried setting up an "IRA Distributions" account but I found it >> unsatisfactory for various reasons, at least the way I set it up. It require >> two transactions instead of one. First, Cr losing IRA fund $100 and Dr IRA >> Distributions. Then, from the "IRA Distributions" account, Dr "IRA >> Distributions" $100, Cr "Withholding tax" $20, and Dr gaining taxable >> account $80. >> >> I had two problems I had with the second approach before I returned to the >> simple approach. It abstracted the re-investment and the withholding tax >> from the actual distribution and I found it confusing, even after I created >> it. Also, the "IRA Distributions" account was self-zeroing, as my debits and >> credits were equal - I was hoping for an approach that would clearly show my >> distributions over time. >> >> Between my wife's accounts and mine - different flavors of tax-benefitted >> and taxable accounts - I'm tracking 20+ accounts and I would like some >> suggestions as to a simple, clear way to do it. >> _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
