You should speak with a local CPA, but I’d posit that if you receive a bill for the full amount, then the taxes are all for one year and belong in that year. You are simply being allowed to pay the bill in installments but it is otherwise fully owed.
There might be a hitch if the bill received in 2018 was for 2019 and you were pre-paying half of it. But that is just a posting date adjustment. (which might necessitate the use of a 'pre-paid expenses' asset account as a temporary intermediary) But if your CPA says you need to recognize only the quarterly payments as expenses when they were actually paid then: Method 1: ========= Creating 4 separate bills with their own future posting dates as Liz suggested. Method 2: ========= Continue as you are now, but create an adjusting transaction at the end of the year(or even right away) reversing the second half of the expense to an “Accrued Expenses” account. (sits under Liabilities) When you make your future February and May payments, re-expense those amounts. There might be some 3rd method using an intermediate account, but I can’t seem to figure out where it would go in the tree. It isn’t a pre-paid expense, so Assets is out. It isn’t a contra-expense because that would cancel itself out. It isn’t a liability because that would also cancel itself out. It isn’t revenue, so Income is out. It doesn’t belong in Equity, though I suppose you could use that and understand it is a ‘virtual account’. Really, if you need to recognize this on a cash basis, you shouldn’t be using the Business Features for this. Instead use manual transactions or scheduled transactions on the dates you make the payments. The Business Features are for accounting on an accrual basis. Regards, Adrien > On Feb 10, 2019, at 11:49 AM, Keith Bellairs <[email protected]> wrote: > > My property tax is payable in 4 installments -- August, November, February, > and May. I have tried to set this up with my town as the vendor and 4 > payments. > > When I ran my income statement for last year, I see that the future > liabilities have been posted with the date that the bill was posted, not > the date that the bill is due. So all of my 2019 payments show as tax > expense in 2018. > > Is there a way to have the vendor bills show up dated with the due date > instead of the date posted? > > Keith _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
