Why is Income Tax put into the same account as Wages in Quicken 2013.

Eddie_6632138
Eddie_6632138 Member Posts: 5 ✭
edited August 2020 in Reckon Accounts (Desktop)
Hi,

I recently downloaded  2013 personal accounts to try out.

I'm having a little trouble understanding the tax related categories and in particular one example where I've used the paycheque feature to setup my regular salary which is all fine. I used it to also enter my tax deductions as well not just my net pay into my account.

It's was a little strange that it assigned my tax deduction to the same category a my gross salary. That is; "Employment: salary and Wages".

None the less the paycheque form was straight forward and I Continued.....

now, this is where I find things get a little strange (I don't understand)

If I then look at the standard "Income Tax Summary" report found under Reports -> Tax. I see that My taxable income is not my gross salary but my net (of tax deduction) salary! the report is titled TY2014-2013 Tax schedule YTD

The report shows; "Question 1 and Question 3", it then shows (on next line) my gross salary and on the following line my tax deducted.

I acknowledge that the ATO tax form does ask for tax withheld as well as gross salary for those questions.

For example if my gross salary is $4000 my tax is $950. Then the report shows (for questions 1 and Question 3) as $3050. The standard report does show the tax deducted as a -ve value in red. But it does not separate the amounts out and totalled to make it easier.

I don't think this is right.....

I went back and looked at the actual transaction in the account. The paycheque feature entered the transaction as a split transaction (i.e gross and tax deducted) but both are assigned exactly the same category (as I eluded to above). This doesn't make sense to me. I would have thought it (quicken) would have assigned a tax related category; i.e tax related: employment salary and wages.

In the paycheque setup you can 'edit' the tax category however, there is not tax related categories available to me in the list to assign.

if somebody can explain how I can gain access to assign the tax related categories or help me understand what's going on. it would be appreciated.

I didn't have this issue with my very old Quicken v8 as it allowed me to access the tax related categories.

Regards
Eddie

Comments

  • Ifti
    Ifti Reckon Staff Posts: 258 Reckon Staff
    edited February 2019
    Hi Eddie,

    Thanks for your post. 

    Its a mystery how the wrong category was selected for your tax but it is easily changeable. Just click on Set up Paycheque and select your pay. On the Income tax line, select Edit and then Add Category. Now create an account like Income Tax as an Expense and assign it to your Tax line. 

    You will have to go back and manually change any entered pays. 

    The current version of Accounts Personal are different from the CashBook v8 stream which changed in 2005. the earlier version had more business-related functions than the current stream which are more focussed on personal finance issues.  

    We hope the above helps.

    Thank you.

    Ifti

  • Eddie_6632138
    Eddie_6632138 Member Posts: 5 ✭
    edited February 2019
    Hi, Thanks for the tip. I setup a new expense category called "tax withheld" and set the "tax related" field to "Q1 & Q3 tax instalments deducted". now when I generate the tax schedule report it shows my gross salary and tax deducted separately under the correct question number.

    I'm using Accounts Personal plus 2013. You say it has limited business functions...??? I have a small business on the side and would like to use it for managing that. So how can I set it up for this? Handling GST also??

    My old version Quicken personal v8 can handle business related stuff.

    It would be unfortunate if this aspect was left out.

    Regards

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