* Lifepillar <[email protected]> [2014-05-17 19:10]:
> consider the following example: an employee in the public sector
> gets a salary that is taxed in advance. He may get a monthly
> statement with the following information:
> Gross income: $5200
> Family allowance (tax-exempt): $100
> Taxes: $1700
> Net income: $3500
BTW, there's a calculation error here. Either net income should be
$3600 or taxes $1800. But that's a just a minor detail. I found your
example very interesting and illuminating.
> The net income is the money that he eventually gets in the bank. He may
> keep track of this information as follows:
>
> 2013/05/17 * Myself
> Assets:Checking:Myself $3500.00
> Income:Salary:Family Allowance $-100.00
> Income:Salary:Taxable:Net
> [Expenses:Taxes:Salary] $1700.00
> [Income:Salary:Taxable:Taxes] $-1700.00
>
> Since the employee never really gets the taxed amount, I think that
> those are conceptually virtual postings and must be treated as such.
> What do you think?
I don't see why they would be conceptually virtual postings. Sure,
tax is deducted at source but this is pretty normal and it's still tax
that *you* are paying (sure, your employer is deducting tax at source,
but it's your tax liability, not your employer's), so it should go
into your ledger. If you pay too much tax, you might get a refund, so
it's definitely something I want to show up in ledger.
So, personally, I'd track the above example as:
2013/05/17 * Myself
Assets:Checking:Myself $3500.00
Expenses:Taxes:Salary $1800.00
Income:Salary:Family Allowance $-100.00
Income:Salary:Taxable $-5200.00
Which is pretty much how I track my employment income.
On the other hand, I find the distinction you generate with bal and
bal --real very interesting and useful -- it reminds me of a feature I
proposed: http://bugs.ledger-cli.org/show_bug.cgi?id=714
However, one concern I have about virtual accounts is that they make
it easy to violate the accounting equation.
Let's assume I typed the following posting:
2013/05/17 * Myself
Assets:Checking:Myself $3500.00
Income:Salary:Family Allowance $-100.00
Income:Salary:Taxable:Net
[Expenses:Taxes:Salary] $1800.00
[Income:Salary:Taxable:Taxes] $-1700.00
Now ledger bal still seems to work, but ledger bal --real shows that
things don't balance. Is there any good reason why this should be
allowed? Are there good use cases for this?
I guess I would feel more comfortable about virtual accounts if they
would have to balance. Otherwise it seems to me that they just invite
errors.
[Of course, I should mention that I don't use virtual accounts at all,
so maybe I'm just missing something.]
--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/
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