Book Image

Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting: Beginner's Guide

4 (1)
Book Image

Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting: Beginner's Guide

4 (1)

Overview of this book

Attention, small business owners! Stop tax-day stress. Stop procrastinating with a shoebox full of receipts. Stop reinventing the wheel with a spreadsheet. Stop making decisions simply on a hunch. Stop wasting money on software that is overkill. Start by downloading GnuCash and getting your accounts in order. Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, income, and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. You can do it and Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting Beginner's Guide will help you get up and running with maintaining your accounts. Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting Beginner's Guide speaks business language, not accountant-speak, because it is written by a former small business owner. It guides you to use GnuCash from scratch with step-by-step tutorials without jargon, pointing out the gotchas to avoid with lots of tips. It will teach you to work on routine business transactions while migrating transaction data from other applications gradually. You will be able to keep on top of transactions and run reports after reading just three chapters! Beyond Chapter 3, it is up to you how far you want to go. Reconcile with your bank and credit card statements. Charge and pay sales tax. Do invoicing. Track payments due. Set up reminders for bills. Avoid stress at tax time. Print checks. Capture expenses using your mobile phone. Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting Beginner's Guide gives you the power. Know your numbers. Make decisions with confidence. Drive your business to its full potential.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 8. Making Tax Times Less Stressful

"In 1862, in order to support the Civil War effort, Congress enacted the nation's first income tax law. It was a forerunner of our modern income tax in that it was based on the principles of graduated or progressive taxation and of withholding income at the source." – history of the income tax in the United States.

You may not jump for joy but, at least, it may make you feel somewhat better to know that taxes on income and sales are not of recent origin and there is plenty of evidence to show that they existed in some form or the other even in ancient times.

According to the literature of the Sangam period (circa 200 BC to 200 AD), the kings of southern India had an eight member council to administer the kingdom that included an accountant and a treasurer. The revenue of the state was from sources like customs, tolls, and land tax. For special projects, such as the raising of the banks of the river Cauvery by the Chola kings, farmers had the option...