On Friday, December 6, 2019 at 12:06:02 AM UTC-8, [email protected] wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> What I'm doing is having two or more beancount files for this kind of
> situations.
> For example, you could have a tax.bean and a personal.bean and write in
> each the different accounts, definitions, etc.
> I know is not the best because you must maintain 2 files, 2 writes, etc...
> but at least, when you are talking to the tax men the information is clear
> and when you are checking your personal finances also.
> Regards.
>
I know large businesses do keep parallel sets of books in this way, but I'm
hoping to avoid that much extra work :)
I will likely end up devising some extra metadata tags for accounts and
transactions so I can run reports to slice things in different ways, but I
was wondering if anyone has a system they already like.
>
>
> On Friday, December 6, 2019 at 1:27:54 AM UTC+1, Jonathan Klabunde Tomer
> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a number of situations where I view a transaction as
>> simultaneously an "expense" and a transfer to an asset (or liability)
>> account, and I'm wondering if anyone else has this experience and likes
>> their solution.
>>
>> Example 1: when my hot water heater broke, I took the opportunity to
>> upgrade to a tankless model. According to the tax code, the difference
>> between what a replacement of the original would have cost and the actual
>> amount I spent on the new unit gets to be added to the cost basis of my
>> house. But outside of doing my taxes, I pretty much consider this to be an
>> expense. I currently have it booked like this:
>>
>> 2019-09-01 * "Some Plumber" "tankless HWH parts & installation"
>> Assets:Checking -5000 USD
>> Expenses:House:Contractors 500 USD
>> Expenses:House:Appliances 500 USD
>> Assets:House:Capital-Improvements 4000 USD
>>
>> but then when I look at my income statement, it looks like I only spent
>> $1,000 on this project when I really spent $5,000. The tax man may
>> (eventually) care that $4,000 went to improving my home's value, but I
>> don't.
>>
>> Example 2: when I pay my mortgage, I recognize a small interest expense
>> and a large principal payment as a transfer:
>>
>> 2019-10-01 * ""
>> Assets:Checking -4500 USD
>> Expenses:Mortgage:Interest 3000 USD
>> Liabilities:Mortgage 1500 USD
>>
>> If I care about changes in my net worth, this makes perfect sense. But if
>> I'm trying to budget, I need to know my actual cash flow, not my P&L; if my
>> income is enough to pay off my real expenses but not my real expenses plus
>> my principal payments, I'm in trouble. I don't have a good way to model
>> this at all.
>>
>> Example 3: I have a donor-advised fund that I use for tax arbitrage of my
>> charitable giving. When I move securities into the DAF, I am making a
>> transfer from one asset account to another, but for tax purposes it would
>> be very helpful to collect everything that's deductible as charitable
>> giving into a single account. What I do now is:
>>
>> 2019-12-01 * "Transfer of appreciated securities to DAF"
>> Assets:Brokerage:STOCK -100 STOCK { 2015-03-04 } @ 100 USD
>> Income:Brokerage:STOCK:Capital-Gains:Non-Taxable
>> Expenses:Charitable-Giving 10000 USD
>> Income:DAF:Contributions 10000 USD
>> Assets:DAF 200 DAF { 50 USD }
>>
>> This works, but it means I have a phantom Income account to ignore in my
>> income statements, which is kind of weird.
>>
>> How do you all handle these types of situation in your accounting and
>> reporting?
>>
>
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