Configuration of tax codes esp. account_de_skr03

Having another detailed look at the tax code chart of account_de_skr03 while debugging intra-community taxes in one of our modules I found a surprising behavior (probably existing since the very start, I checked back until version 5.0).

The problem

To have all readers on the same picture some rough translations of tax code names:

  • 83: Remaining advance payment for VAT / Remaining surplus - please put a negative sign before the amount
  • U: VAT
  • VST: Deducible input tax

As the tax code structure is deducted from a regular official formular this means that in field 83 should be the resulting amount to pay to the tax collection agency which should amount to U minus VST. For testing I created a customer and supplier invoice with amount 100€ subject to VAT 19% resp. Deducible Input Tax 19%. The result of taxes to pay thus amounts to zero.

The current behavior

Note: Do not care about the base amount which is correctly 100, I used an intracommunity tax in this example provding basically the same tax line setup.

All tax amounts are summed in field 83 thus showing a definitely wrong amount according to its name.

Solution 1

Reverting the tax code line signs for Deducible Input Tax 19% indeed results in correct numbers.
This solution would afford a migration of existing tax lines when applied.

Solution 2

Renaming tax code 83 to a correct name indicating that taxes are just summed up and do not show the result to deduct to authorities.

Which direction to take?

Personally I am strongly inclined to Solution 1.

  • The resulting amount to pay shows correctly the expected sum.
  • OTOH this change will afford migration of existing tax lines and will show after migration different tax code charts for previous periods.
  • Solution 2 corrects the (currently wrong) description but doesn’t provide useful numbers.

Thoughts? @ced , @timitos , @udono

This seems a good solution but it depends also on the sign expected for VST in the tax report.
If it should be positive then it will probably better to add a new feature to tax code get_amount to define if a children code must be added or subtracted.

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Good catch. The official portal at ELSTER - Startseite expects positive numbers for deducible taxes, I suspect other softwares behave the same way. So the proposed feature is much more elegant and won’t require a problematic migration.