Feature Request: Sales Tax report

[freelock]

I'd like is a sales tax report to simplify my tax reporting. Most of my revenue is getting reclassified as retail, which means I now need to start collecting sales tax from many of my customers -- before now I only had a couple dozen taxable transactions in a quarter, now that goes up to hundreds.

What I do now is do a GL report on the sales tax account with amounts > 0.01 in the reporting quarter, and then I sort on the "Source" column. Next I drop those into a spreadsheet (can't export CSV because there's no newlines, ods and xlsx exports are also broken, so I'm copying/pasting the html) and add:

• Column to subtotal the tax for each location code, putting in a SUM on the last row before the source changes
• Column for the tax basis of each row
• Go look up the tax basis, following the links from the GL report, and enter them one by one into the spreadsheet
• Add another column to sum the tax basis for each location code
• Add some calculations below the fields, where I have 4 lines:
  a) Retail sales total amount (from PNL)
  b) In-state sales (sum of the tax basis column)
  c) FX/Interstate sales ( b - a )
  d) Intrastate sales (b - the sum of the tax basis for the Seattle location -- needed for my city tax return)

... I then plug these into two returns:

• State -- Retail sales total amount, deduction for FX/Interstate, and then in the sales tax detail area, the total tax basis for each location code.
• City -- Retail sales total amount, deduction for FX/Interstate, deduction for Intrastate

Now comes the complication. I have two tax-exempt clients in Washington -- one is a tribe, the other is a housing authority. So I asked Claude AI how I should be tracking these sales, and ended up with a recommendation to create two new tax accounts (because these are treated differently). Apparently my tribal client is entirely tax exempt -- I don't need to collect or remit sales tax for them, and I can deduct their payments from the top-line revenue before I pay "B&O tax" on the revenue. However, my housing authority client is exempt from sales tax, but NOT B&O -- so for them, I need to include the revenue in my retail sales -- but deduct the amount after the B&O calculation (but before the sales tax).
So I've set up 2 new sales tax accounts, set to use the "Simple" tax reporting, with a 0% rate.
And I've applied those to the appropriate customers.
So now a couple questions:

1. Should I also set the new taxes on any taxable products these clients purchase? I'm thinking this would at least get entries on that tax account...; or

2. is tagging them enough to get appropriate reports? Here's the summary - "I need to track Washington state sales for B&O tax reporting, where some customers are sales-tax-exempt but B&O-taxable (housing authorities), and others are fully exempt (tribal sales). I need to generate reports showing gross sales broken down by location and exemption type."

[ehuelsmann]

Go look up the tax basis, following the links from the GL report, and enter them one by one into the spreadsheet

This might not work for you, but: I have an obligation to report taxes (VAT) in the categories (a) within The Netherlands, (b) within the EU, (c) outside the EU and (d) VAT on products bought in the EU where no VAT was charged.

I'm using Tax Forms to collect the tax-base numbers; I'm assuming my accountant uses these numbers to multiply with the appropriate tax rates.

[ehuelsmann]

So I've set up 2 new sales tax accounts, set to use the "Simple" tax reporting, with a 0% rate.

For my understanding: those being the "B&O tax" and the "tax exempt" accounts? I do understand that you'd set the "tax exempt" account to 0%, but why did you set "B&O tax" to 0%? Don't you collect this tax from your customers? I mean: you have to remit the B&O tax, but it's not on invoices to collect it (as in: prices are inclusive)?

[ehuelsmann]

We used to have a "taxable sales" report, but we removed it, because it lacked design and it wasn't clear how to handle cash-basis reporting versus accrual-basis reporting. Also, the report would show different numbers if transactions with posting dates in reported-on periods would be created. Do you need the report to be like a reconciliation report (allocating taxes to a specific report and thereby never including them in any other report again)? Or is the original type of report what you need (a simple query over a specific date range, subject to change at any time)?