Hi people! With the disclaimer that I'm keeping these books for myself, as I'm not required by law to keep them at all, here I come ask you about this specific tax.
Also, this turned quite longer than I thought it would, actually while
writing my thoughts cleared quite a bit... :) Guess that's a kind of
"rubber duck debugging"!
For the quicker version go straight to below where I describe my case in
way more practical terms.
Background:
When I issue an invoice I may (or may not) have to pay a 2€ duty stamp
and attach it to the invoice. That's an effect specific to the fact
that I produced a document, and I also need to attach such duty stamp
to credit notes, for example.
Now, if I do a paper invoice, I most likely already bought weeks/months
prior a stash of those duty stamps. Instead, if I'm doing an electronic
invoice, the payment for those stamp is deferred to the next quarter.
Furthermore, I may or may not (my choice) bill the customer for the
expense of this duty stamp.
So I am a bit lost on how to properly account for this thing. To me is
an expense, that may or may not be charged back to the customer, but I
would also like to gather data on, like, how many invoices I'm issuing
that I am not billing the duty stamp on, so I wouldn't like to "hide"
them into some random expense/income account.
The different methods of actual payment of them (in advance or
postponed) surely doesn't help make it straightforward.
Probably the hardest part is that I would really like to tie the expense
to each invoice. I have no clue if there even is a way to do that, but
it doesn't seem like there is one. Handling invoices through the
GnuCash invoice system makes it impossible to me to add random splits,
is there even a chance I could do this?
If not, guess I would be stuck creating a separate transaction manually
each time I issue an invoice. (in the below examples, I'm referring
specifically to the two splits that invoice Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps) and
simply "linking" that expense to the invoice by the memo field.
To clarify and recap, here was my thinking:
1. The accounts (simplified naming, I have a deeper tree):
Balance
Assets:Banks:Checking 500.00
Assets:Cash 50.00
Assets:AR 0.-
Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps 0.-
Income:Invoices 0.-
Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Pre 2.00-
Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Post 0.-
I decided to separate the Pre and Post variant of duty stamps since
they are after all handled completely differently and stashing them
in a single account would only create confusion later on IMHO.
2. When I buy "paper duty stamps" (that can only be bought in cash…):
Debit Credit Balance
Assets:Cash 2.00 48.00
Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Pre 2.00 4.00-
Here the Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Pre represents a sort of prepaid
expense, resulting in a credit for me, which is hence recorded as a
negative liability.
3. When I issue an electronic invoice for which I am *not* charging the
customer:
Debit Credit Balance
Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps 2.00 2.00
Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Post 2.00 2.00
This is what I would love to have in my invoice posting transaction
(the one that also bears A/R and Income), but that I fear my just
simply not be possible.
4. When I issue an electronic invoice for which I am charging it back:
Debit Credit Balance
Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps 2.00 4.00
Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Post 2.00 4.00
Assets:AR 2.00 2.00
?????????? 2.00
To what should I match that AR? It ought to be some kind of Income,
but I am not really sure, it's not really an income is it? It feels
constrained to use Income:Invoices. I was half-thinking to match it
against Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps (similarly to what one would do with
credit card rebates), but GnuCash won't let me do that from within an
invoice. Or am I looking at this from the wrong side and I should
just get an Income:TaxCollection kind of account?
5. When I issue a paper invoice, not claiming back the duty stamp:
Debit Credit Balance
Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps 2.00 6.00
Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Pre 2.00 2.00-
And there follows the rest of the invoice; like with case 3, beside
this magic linking that I would love to have with these 2 splits and
the actual invoice, I think nothing more is needed.
6. For the paper invoice claiming back the duty stamp, it should be like
case 4 with the :Pre account, nothing else.
7. When I go to settle the postponed duty stamp and the end of the
quarter I suppose I'll simply do:
Debit Credit Balance
Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Post 4.00 0.00
Assets:Banks:Checking 4.00 496.00
And be done.
Am I in the right direction? Do you spot anything totally wrong? And
how would you handle these details I'm unsure about?
Thank you in advance for any thought and input you might be able to give
to me! :)
--
regards,
Mattia Rizzolo
GPG Key: 66AE 2B4A FCCF 3F52 DA18 4D18 4B04 3FCD B944 4540 .''`.
More about me: https://mapreri.org : :' :
Launchpad user: https://launchpad.net/~mapreri `. `'`
Debian QA page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mattia `-
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