RE: [SQL-Ledger-users] Tax summary

[Leo M. <Le...@Ne...>]

This is losing its relevance as Canadian reporting 
requirements changed, but Canada actually has two
classes which fit into your exempt category.  These
are the tax exempt and zero-rated, the later are
taxable sales at a rate of zero percent.  The
difference is that you are allowed input tax credits
against the taxable sales (even if at 0%) but not
against the exempt sales.  For most businesses, you
may have to proportion the two to determine what
input tax credits to claim.  Therefore, you will need
to differentiate between exempt sales and zero rated.

The US is another can of worms.  Depending on how
you set up your books, you may be tracking four 
different sales taxes such as in the Seattle area.
These taxes are: state, municipal, transit, and
entertainment.  The latter three will vary depending
on where the goods are delivered.  The metropolitan
Seattle area has about 20 municipalities in the
RTA (Regional Transit Authority) area.  The tax for
each municipality has to be tracked separately.

This week, the Canadian municipalities were lobbying 
for the right to impose such a taxation mess on 
Canadians in their municipalities.  What ever happened
to the KISS principle:  Keep It Simple, Stupid!

-----Original Message-----
From: Dieter Simader [mailto:dsi...@sq...]
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 11:25
To: 'sql...@li...'
Subject: RE: [SQL-Ledger-users] Tax summary


Adrian,

create seperate GST accounts and record the GST when you make a sale in
GST1 and make a GL entry from GST1 to GST2 when you get paid.

If you need to keep sales/income amounts and expenses seperate then create
seperate accounts for them too.

I allowed for two levels of tax for parts and two levels of tax for
services plus a general tax exclusion for sales to tax excempt customers.
This covers most everything in Canada, and as far as I know in the US. For
SQL-Ledger to work in Europe you'll have to do come up with some
workarounds. The folks down under are closest to our Canadian tax system,
albeit as we see now do have some peculiarities of their own.

There are some changes in the works which will make SQL-Ledger easier 
to adapt to different tax systems. These include taxes per item, any
number of taxes rather than the two levels now and tax included or not.


Dieter Simader    http://www.sql-ledger.org   (780) 472-8161
DWS Systems Inc.     Accounting Software       Fax: 478-5281
=========== On a clear disk you can seek forever ===========

On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Leo Masciuch wrote:

> I suspect that to do GST/VAT on a cash basis and the rest
> of the books on an accrual basis, you'd have to develop
> the tax handling routines separately.  The only accounting
> package that I've seen attempt the is QuickBooks and their
> solution for cash accounting uses proportions applied to
> accrual accounting.
> 
> I wonder if Dieter anticipated the nuances that would 
> arise for each country's implementation of sales tax.  I
> spent a number of years in the USA and it is a matter of
> each municipality's implementation of sales tax.
> 
> Regards,
> Leo R Masciuch, M.B.A., P.Eng.
> Netryst Corp.
> 5051 Vantage Cres NW
> Calgary, AB  T3A 1X6
> Canada
> Tel: +1-403-202-5039
> Fax: +1-403-202-5038
> Le...@Ne...