SK PST and SASK ITC

Hi there Bomacimprovements,

Setting up and using the correct sales tax codes is an important part of the bookkeeping process. You'll be thanking yourself when it comes time to remit and everything is exactly as it should be! I know that different provinces have different regulations and requirements, and it's important that you know how to account for that. Let me point you in the right direction.

When it comes to creating a Journal Entry, checking in with an accounting professional is the best course of action. They'll know which accounts you should credit and debit, and can advise you on best practices. If you're already working with an account, invite them to join you in QuickBooks! It's as simple as navigating to the My Accountant tab, and entering their email address in the Invite field. If you don't have an accountant just yet, you're in luck because we have a database of QuickBooks-certified accountants, known as Pro Advisors. They would love to assist you with your QuickBooks journey, and can be found by using the Find a pro to help button within the My Accountant tab.

In terms of Modifying the GST/PST, there isn't a way to do this specifically, but you can create a custom tax rate, and combine several rates into a group rate as necessary. Here's how:

1. Navigate to the Taxes tab.
2. Hit Manage Sales Tax.
3. Choose the tax agency you'd like to add a rate for, and hit + Add custom rate.
4. Enter a name and select whether you collect this rate on sales, pay it on purchases, or both.
5. Select Add tax if you'd like to create a custom agency and tax codes, or use the option to Combine taxes into a group rate so that you can apply multiple codes at once, such as your ITC rate and PST.
6. Enter a name for the group, select the rates, and hit Add.

If you have further questions, your accountant is going to be a great resource. I wish you all the best and hope you have a great day!

Unfortunately the accountant I have been using is not a fan of QBO, preferring instead to use Quickbooks Desktop.

After more investigation (I've been at this all day), I've come up with a solution I would like the community's opinion on: 

The only account I calculate PST ITC on is "Job Materials". When creating an expense I use the tax code GST/PST; the GST gets debited from the "GST Payable" account and I could not figure out where it was credited. Further investigation shows the report for the "Job Materials" account records the expense total as Subtotal+PST, and does not include the GST in the end report. Clearly the GST gets credited directly to the "Job Materials" account.

By this logic I should be able to create a Journal Entry each month for the total PST collected on "Job Materials" expenses, and debit that total from "PST Payable", while crediting "Job Materials". This will effectively leave only the subtotal from each Expense in "Job Materials" instead of the account having to absorb the PST cost that I should be saving as an ITC. 

The disadvantage of this method, is that while GST no longer shows on each expense amount in the report, PST still will. And there will be an additional entry each month to counter the PST on each expense, but not directly linked within QBO.
Please see Attached for an example.

I'd like to just join in on this conversation to keep it active. I just encountered this missing feature and it is going to take me days to go back and figure all of this out. This is a horrifying ommission in the software that is going to cost me a lot of time which is lost revenue.

Please fix this issue!

I run a small HVAC business in Sask and am running into the same issue. I am new to quickbooks and setting up the accounts to properly track the PST paid to deduct from the PST owing, similar to how the GST does it is overwhelming to me. It would be great if Quickbooks could fix this. In the meantime, I appreciate any help with a quick and easy way to set this up.

This is silly that this is still going on after all these years. From a 10000 foot view, this is a simple fix. Anything categorized as cost of goods sold should have the PST applied as an ITC against the PST payable for Saskatchewan. I can't really believe it's that hard with the near limitless resources that Intuit has for developing this.

Just to add another log on this dumpster fire, when you are manually calculating out the PST ITC's, don't forget to deduct those ITCs from your COGS account. It applies the PST as part of the COGS which is deducted against your income for tax purposes. I don't believe there will be many people in the tax agencies that will see the humor in this double dipping. I just caught this today while trying to figure out a way to make this train wreck easier, and now I guess my next few days will be spent going back through all of my transactions this year and trying to figure out a way to correct them.

Intuit- we pay you a lot of money each month for this software. We aren't all accountants, and we can't all afford book keepers. The reason we part with our hard earned cash is so that this part of our business is as painless as possible. This is like pulling teeth.

Wait... this just gets better and better.

As a test I ran through an expense for an inventory item. The inventory item has a cost of $165.00 in the item description, but for this instance, I adjusted the price I paid (which is a very frequent occurrence) to $169.00. I then created a test invoice with said product. My COGS did not increase on my P&L until after the test invoice which was expected.

The results when I ran the inventory report:

The expense with the adjusted price showed the inventory asset increase by the item price of 169.00. The next item in the report showed the inventory asset total decrease by the $165.00 (that is in the product description) PLUS PST. So the inventory asset value decreases by cost of the item set in the description- not what you actually paid for it, plus the PST collected, however the inventory asset does not increase by the PST paid. The COGs on the P&L increased by $165.00 PLUS PST! So, that begs the question- where is the cost increase from $165.00 to $169.00 going? Do I have to manually average the item costs over time so it's accurate for tax reporting services? My inventory asset value is a mess. It's not even close to accurate. my COGS over the last 7 years are a mess. Again- no where accurate.

So, this tells me a few things. 1- this software has absolutely no idea how to handle the PST. 2- I could be in for a major nightmare if the CRA comes knocking, and it's not as though I am intentionally doing this. 3- I can't trust it. Just that one item alone is a $9.90 difference. So, over the last 7 years selling hundreds and hundreds of items just like this for usually quite a bit more money, what was my actual income? I would venture a guess it was no where near what Quickbooks reported. I suspect it was a lot more, and I also suspect that myself and many, many other users are in deep trouble if the CRA or Ministry of Finance decides to do a deep dive into our finances.

Is there someone who is far more proficient than I am with this that can chime in to let me know if this is normal behavior or if this is an absolute disaster waiting to happen?