[ale] GnuCash (Was: Re: [OT] Home PBX?)

[Derek Atkins]

"mike at trausch.us" <mike at trausch.us> writes:

[snip]
>> As I said, it's certainly doable.  But I don't think GnuCash would be
>> the right place for it necessarily only because it's something that
>> would need to be configured for every business.  Then again it could
>> just be left open (like the Tax Tables, Customers, Vendors, Billing
>> Terms, etc) for you to fill in.
>
> To a certain extent.  It would be kinda cool if GC had a way to take the
> data that was in, for example, IRS Pub 15 and automatically handle it.
> Someone would have to take the tables and formulas and put them in, plus
> they have to be able to be updated without recompiling GC.
>
> I plan on doing something like that when I get to the point where I'm
> not relying on the payroll company.  The only real complication there is
> trying to keep up-to-date with the various states.  The IRS sends out a
> new copy of Pub 15 annually, so updating tax tables based on that would
> work just fine.  I'm not sure if states actually all do something like
> that or not.

I've thought about something like that and what it would mean.  The main
issue is that even right now you're talking about something US-centric.
And even focusing on US-centric you still have a metric buttload of
things to worry about, not just the various tax tables for Fed, State,
County, and City, but also pre-tax deductions, post-tax deductions,
capped deductions, deductions that count against one tax but not
another, etc, etc, etc.  It's a complete morass.  

Now add a second country.  ;)

Yes, of course the right way to do it would be via a
scheme/xml/json/TNBT file that contained the tax rules for your locale
(or allowed you to select your locale to choose the rules).  And yes, it
should absolutely be a runtime-loaded file, not compiled in.  But
generating the file accurately every year would be a LOT of work.

Honestly, if I were doing it I would most definitely charge for the tax
tables, because I don't see an automated way to input them.  And if I
had to do it by hand every year to support users I would definitely want
some compensation for my time there.

> Actually, I'm pretty sure that there are people that create data files
> representing all of those things online.  I wonder how much effort it
> would be to get GC to do payroll processing in such a way that it could
> use those tables, and then one could be able to do things like enter the
> number of hours in GC and get all the right splits out of it.  You'd
> still have to print checks or initiate the ACH transactions external to
> GC, though.

GC can print checks.  But yes, you would need to initate ACH outside of
gnucash.  And you would have to train gnucash to print out an actual
paystub.

> As an aside: why the hell don't we have a developer-friendly bank,
> something along the same lines as Stripe, but that allows for small-time
> ACH transfers?

Good question.  Possibly because Intuit controls the market and there is
no open-source OFX server?

> 	--- Mike

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available