> > On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 9:04 PM, > > I'm starting to think that I should start creating a distinct expense >> > account for each tax year, because that's how both the Canadian and US >> > governments handle it: amounts that you post get booked to a particular >> > year >> >> I'd use tags. >> > > That would work too, but perhaps would be more annoying. > > In solving many of these problems I have found that tags will often be > used as a subaccount would, so for at least some uses they're equivalent. > A similar remark can be made about payees: a payee could often be replaced > by a subaccount if the transactions for that payee always book to the same > account, e.g. Expenses:Internet with payee "Time Warner" or > Expenses:Internet:TimeWarner. I have been pondering adding an option to > automatically convert one into the other at runtime if this occurs; I could > automatically detect when a consistent payee always occurs to the same > account. > > Thanks for your thoughtful comments, >
So I did convert all my tax accounts to be "by taxation year" and I quite like it! :-) For instance, I have a notice from the govt about some amount owed for TY2011 and now I can just pull up that account to see a history of payments made for that taxation year, beyond 2011. I thought I'd share, others may find this useful. Here's the set of declarations that works for me (example from 2013, I have a section like this for each taxation year): ;; General accounts 2013-01-01 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Federal USD 2013-01-01 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:StateNY USD 2013-01-01 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Federal:PreTax401k IRAUSD ;; Employer-specific accounts for at-the-source withholdings. 2013-01-28 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Medicare:Google USD ; "Employee Medicare" 2013-01-28 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Federal:Google USD ; "Federal Income Tax" 2013-01-28 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:CityNYC:Google USD ; "New York City Tax" 2013-01-28 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:SDI:Google USD ; "NY Disability Employee" 2013-01-28 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:StateNY:Google USD ; "NY State Income Tax" 2013-01-28 open Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:SocSec:Google USD ; "Social Security Employee Tax" 2013-01-01 * "Annual maximum 401k contribution allowed for 2013" Income:US:Federal:PreTax401k -17500 IRAUSD Assets:US:Federal:PreTax401k 17500 IRAUSD 2014-03-29 * "Filed US taxes" Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Federal XXXX.XX USD Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:StateNY XXXX.XX USD Liabilities:AccountsPayable ... more tax-related entries, maybe ... ;; Closing at-the-source withholding accounts right away. 2013-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Federal:PreTax401k 2013-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Medicare:Google 2013-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Federal:Google 2013-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:CityNYC:Google 2013-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:SDI:Google 2013-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:StateNY:Google 2013-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:SocSec:Google ;; Closing the general accounts 1.5 years after the filing date in case of updates. 2015-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:Federal 2015-12-31 close Expenses:Taxes:US:TY2013:StateNY The general accounts for each receiver are there to book amounts for the tax filing and further adjustments. They get closed much later when I'm more confident that the filing has been accepted. (Of course if that weren't the case - e.g. a late audit - I could just comment out the lines and then add later entries - Beancount barks if you have entries with a date after an account has been closed.) The employer-specific accounts allow me to count the numbers that the corresponding W2 should provide. If you had multiple employers during that year you would have a separate set of these accounts for each. I close these right at the end of that year because there will be no further corresponding source withholding after it. The PreTax401k accounts track allowed contributions to a 401k account. If you don't max it out with contributions, you have to write off the remainder of the Assets:US:Federal:PreTax401k at the EOY. The balance of the Assets account at the EOY tells you how much to write off. About using tags instead: I still prefer accounts in the end, here's two reasons why, which I noticed after I tried this out: 1. When I'm looking at the income statement for a particular calendar year, having separate accounts naturally provides a breakdown of how many payments I made for this current year, and how many I did for the last year (the one I filed). It's nice to see both balances separately. If I used tags, I would not have those, I'd have to filter by tag and see one or the other. 2. Some of my transactions actually involve payments for multiple tax years; I wouldn't be able to handle those with tags, I would have to split them into multiple transactions. Here are two examples: 2013-08-21 * "Payment / WWW PAYMENT - CRA-AMT OWING" | "Tax payment to CRA to cover for amounts due after refiling of 2010, 2011, 2012 taxes" Assets:CA:MyBank:Checking -XXXX.XX CAD Expenses:Taxes:CA:TY2009:Federal X.XX CAD Expenses:Taxes:CA:TY2010:Federal XX.XX CAD Expenses:Taxes:CA:TY2011:Federal XXXX.XX CAD In this one, updated filings on multiple years triggered them to send me a single amount due, collating information from those three years. I made a single payment, to cover for amounts in three different years. This is one transaction. Attaching tags to the transaction would also not reflect each posting's specific amount; the accounts naturally handle this well. (Can you attach a tag to a posting in Ledger? Not in Beancount.) 2013-10-07 * "Payment / WWW PAYMENT - CRA-AMT OWING - Not admissible to QST jul 2010 - apr 2011" Assets:CA:MyBank:Checking -XXX.XX CAD Expenses:Taxes:CA:TY2010:Federal XXX.XX CAD Expenses:Taxes:CA:TY2011:Federal XXX.XX CAD In this second example, amounts reimbursed for a local sales tax (4x/year) were rescinded following an update of residency status. The dept that handles this sales tax must be distinct from the other ones I suspect, because they sent me a request for a payment with amounts that straddles two taxation years. By having the accounts, I can book those to the correct year. I wonder if a more general rule-of-thumb can be inferred here: "if you can make do with subaccounts, you should always favor that over tags or other mechanisms." Not sure if always true? But surely something to think about. -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. 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