And to hammer another nail into Michael's point, the tax rate can vary by date. For example, when I lived in New York state it had a 4% sales tax rate, including on clothing, _except_ for certain weekends each year, when clothing below a certain value was taxed at 0% but other taxable goods were still at 4%.
In fact it was even more complicated than that, because most counties had their own add-on sales taxes, and some of them also lifted _their_ taxes on the same weekends as the state while others did not. In Ithaca, we paid 8% tax on clothing most of the year, but 4% on those special "tax-free" weekends. As Michael says, GC being a global product, if it were to treat sales-type taxes specially it would have to keep track of thousands of rules. Testing that code would be a nightmare, and I'm confident there would be many, bugs, a significant number of them undetected. That's particularly bad in tax matters! Stan Brown Tehachapi, CA, USA https://BrownMath.com On 2023-06-18 08:26, Michael or Penny Novack wrote: > On 6/17/2023 10:06 PM, Karl May wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> For my business setup I am wondering whether there is a way to >> automatically >> account for gst on small random purchases (e.g. hotel, restaurant etc.). >> >> ........... >> >> Any suggestions how this can be automated such that the default is a >> transaction split and application of a default GST rate? >> >> Thanks > > > In looking for/expecting and automated solution you are thinking one > should be reasonable. But that's ONLY for the (very) special case where > the tax rate on things like "hotel", "restaurant", etc, would be > uniform. Since I live in the US, I do not have that expectation. I know > that every state imposes a different rate (and taxes different things*) > and some municipalities are allowed to impose local taxes in addition. > > Thus I expect to enter manually from the receipt which will spell out > the amounts of various taxes. It would be much more work to go to the > state and/or municipality sites to find out the rates (and its "rounding > rule") and try to compute it myself. That's what the vendor (hotel, > restaurant, store, etc.) has a POS system to figure out and of course it > "knows" where it is located (which rules apply). In other words, even > adding the complexity of a typical POS system to gnucash would not help, > because the exact legal location is unlikely to be included in the > transaction information by the time it gets to gnucash. > > Michael D Novack > > * It can even depend on the sort of business the vendor is as well as > the item. Thus my own state of MA does not tax items of clothing costing > below a certain amount. So one winter day, leaving the house, I forgot > to put on gloves. So say I stop to get some, it will make a difference > where I stop. If I stop at the local hardware store or garden store, > taxed, as "protective gear". But if I stopped at the general store, not > taxed, as clothing. So to be automated in gnucash, the POS part would > not only need to know the legal location but how the item classed by > that sort of vendor. > > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
