It isn’t. Each European country is an independent Nation and thus not a State as in USA. Not all European countries have the EURO as their base currency nor do they have same tax systems or for that matter languages. There are many EU agreements related to import and export taxes but not to VAT and Corporate tax.
No, because countries charge the taxes due to them as they are supposed to.
I wonder why you mention only USA and Europe. Many Manager users are from much farther afield and probably in larger numbers. The application is developed and maintained by an Australian company with a strong user base there, but similarly popular in Middle-east, India and Africa.
Yes, everything you’re saying proves my point. Each country (or state) has different tax systems, and this would be needed outside the USA if a business served multiple countries.
Your tax system requires collection of tax for multiple tax authorities for each item you sell (state, county, city etc). As a result you have to use multipart tax codes. In Manager that currently requires independent tax code for each combination of tax codes. The first point above suggest have one tax code for each tax authorities tax, then combine that single tax code in as many combinations as required. Doing so enables report transformations to readily support each individual tax authorities reporting requirements.
The second point is to generalise the structure of invoice level tax codes to use the above structure but presented to the user as applying to all invoice items. That enables support of multiple withholding taxes but could also be used to apply any tax code all invoice line items (the feature you wanted).
OH yes, I understand now. Thank you for explaining it better. And with how you are explaining it, I see that (at least part of this) is actually how QuickBooks does it. Many independent codes for reporting that can then be setup as one code combination (they call it a group). You choose the group on invoices or receipts so it shows the total tax, but in back-end reports it divides it out and shows all of the individual ones you owe money to.
In my Manager test file, I setup taxes with multiple rates in them, which was very easy. The thing is, I hadn’t tried running a report yet. I just did, and it only shows the tax code group name, but not the individual rates inside of it. That would make things very difficult for us in the USA as well. The mechanism is already there to have multiple rates in one code, and the invoices and receipts can show it, so why doesn’t the Tax Summary Report show it?
Edit - I just created sub-accounts for each tax rate and assigned them properly. Now, the Balance Sheet report does show the correct amount broken out, but the Tax Summary report still doesn’t. This really is problematic. If there is a better way to get a report on these sub-accounts, I haven’t found it yet - maybe it’s in the guides or someone can tell me. If there isn’t a better way, there needs to be.
I totally understand that the rest of the world exists, and that everything shouldn’t be USA centric.
That said, lack of a proper workflow for tax makes most features beyond the general ledger unusable for those businesses. If you aren’t willing to accept that you need to remember which items are taxable, which tax rate applies to which customer, and then apply it to every line item, on every invoice, every time- you’re out of luck.
The OP gave a simple suggestion that would solve the issue. Allow a tax code to be assigned to a customer. They also provided a wealth of information about their situation and expressed willingness to use a workaround, if anybody had an idea.
What could have happened was some brainstorming ways to handle the situation using existing features, discussion on simlar issues, and other helpful posts. That’s the great thing about software with an active community of users. It makes considering these smaller software projects worth considering.
What did happen was a bunch of active users decided it was better to stray off the topic at hand and just bash the concept of even considering the largest economy in the world. I’m perfectly happy doing a bunch of internationalization on my own- the rest of the world has been putting up with everything being US centric since the beginning of globalization. But when you’ve got your best resource (the user community) actively working against features that might be seen as “only useful to the USA” it doesn’t bode well for the long-term usability of the software if you’re in the USA.
Bucke, thank you for the support and for eloquently summarizing what I was trying to say. I had pretty much given up on going further with the topic, since the developers have no interest in implementing a fix for someone who would become a paying customer. It is sad that constructive feedback gets immediately bashed by people just because they won’t use the feature. It is even more sad that developers would treat a willing contributor this way (financial contribution but also someone willing and able to give detailed and usable feedback) (I had issues in this and other threads)
I understand other countries may be tired of a US-centric view - however I’m not saying it has to ONLY be setup for the US! As you mentioned, I described a way that taxation could function well for everyone, everywhere.
As you also mentioned, the US is a huge economy, and MANY US small businesses are looking for new solutions due to QuickBooks forcing changes that people don’t like. Manager could have used this opportunity to gain customers, and support from US users at a time when they are looking for new solutions, but instead, chooses to ignore their needs and even bash them.
I have since found two other (free, open-source) solutions that I am trialing. Neither are US-based, yet both already had taxation the way I needed it, proving that my request is not uncommon nor for only a small percentage of users. Further, the developers of both are happy to implement other changes that are needed (for a reasonable fee for priority support, which is beyond reasonable since the products are free - and again, they are actually willing to do it). They welcome the feedback to make their products better.
Bucke and KJabs - thank you for both addressing a concern I share. I’ve been trialing Manager and am now making my final list of stuff I need to make sure it can handle before I cut loose QuickBooks. US sales tax is the first on my list and I was disappointed to learn that there is resistance to adding the features to make this doable.
I’m considering using the API to automate the creation of invoices, so I may solve this problem by doing the sales tax assignment in my source system.
@KJabs - Would you mind sharing the names of the 2 other solutions you’ve been trialing?