You hit a couple of very good points. Not sure if you had a chance to read the article in full, but I cover them both there:
Article: *Computing Taxes with Beancount* <https://reds-rants.netlify.app/personal-finance/computing-taxes-with-beancount/> This is really neat. A couple things I've noted from doing mine: > > - I split my tax expenses like > Expenses:Taxes:TY{tax-year}:Federal:(Income|Medicare|SS). I think this is > helpful especially if you either get a large refund or pay a large tax > bill > when filing so you can allocate taxes paid to the tax year rather than > calendar year which they are paid or received. > > Agree, solving this problem is very much a necessity to ensure things stay simple, clean, and queriable. I do it via the approach below though. Compared to the Expenses:Taxes:TY{tax-year}:* approach, it is automation friendly for imports. I.e., you don't have to update or code your importer to book your paychecks to the current year. You only have to fix the one or two exceptions like refunds or payments. Anyway, either approach works fine :). From the article: *I use my effective_date plugin <https://github.com/redstreet/beancount_reds_plugins/tree/master/beancount_reds_plugins/effective_date> to book every single Expense posting related to a tax year, in that tax year. Doing so is key to keeping queries simple and maintainable. Eg:* *2020-05-15 * "2019 Federal refund received"* * Assets:Bank 10 USD* * Expenses:Federal-Income-Tax:Refund* * effective_date: 2019-12-31* > > - I see this as being really useful for helping you figure out around > the beginning of Q4 how much additional you need to withhold to get into > the income tax safe harbor in order to not pay a penalty if you will have > a > tax bill due come April. > > Totally---that's actually precisely the primary reason I started doing this a few years ago. So it's the very first bullet I mention in the article: *I don’t use this setup to file taxes, given the complexity of keeping up with forms and the law each year. Instead, I use it for:* - *estimating taxes, including to make estimated payments* - *...* > Thanks for another good use case Red! > Of course, glad it's helpful :). > > On Friday, December 23, 2022 at 5:09:07 PM UTC-5 Red S wrote: > >> Just wanted share that I did my usual end of the year ballpark estimate >> of taxes owed and tax bracket for planning. *It took me all of two >> minutes*. I used 2021's code for the python-taxes part, which is close >> enough for this part. >> >> Hope this serves as encouragement to get your own taxes-with-beancount >> setup. >> >> On Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 6:10:57 PM UTC-7 Red S wrote: >> >>> Here is the write-up. >>> <https://reds-rants.netlify.app/personal-finance/computing-taxes-with-beancount/> >>> >>> I hope this is useful. Constructive feedback appreciated. >>> >>> I'd also be interested in hearing about tax situations that you are able >>> to, or not able to solve by leveraging Beancount. Feel free to leave >>> questions and comments on that page (github account required), or post here >>> in this thread. >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/a357c76e-ddb5-4428-9cae-664f244a6720n%40googlegroups.com.
