Mon, 21 Mar 2005
All of the archers out there will be happy to hear that the Arrow Tax has
been repealed. Alas, the Bow Tax still applies.
Bows
The 11% tax on bows will apply to bows having a peak draw weight of 30 pounds
or more. This replaces the current law which applies to bows having a peak draw
weight of 10 pounds or more. Broadheads suitable for use with certain arrows
will be taxed as a part and accessory at the 11% bow tax rate. The effective
date for both provisions is for articles sold after November 21, 2004.
Repeal of Arrow Tax
The tax on arrows that was in effect for arrows sold after November 21, 2004,
and before December 23, 2004, has been repealed. The rules used prior to
November 22, 2004, for arrow components still apply for the 4th quarter of
2004. Any tax that was imposed by the manufacturer, producer, or importer on
arrows after November 21, 2004, and before December 23, 2004, may have to be
refunded to the purchaser. See Changes Effective for the Second Quarter of 2005
for details on the tax on arrow shafts effective after March 31, 2005.
How
much are we paying the members of Congress to make these laws? (Hint: It's less than
$155,101)
Update: Unfortunately, those arrows aren't really tax free. Beginning
March 31, there will be a tax on the arrow
shaft.
business » taxes | Permanent Link
Five Apples
- I can't believe that once I've counted four apples, there are no more apples.
culture | Permanent Link
I decided to
use Quasar to do my accounting. It's a
huge improvement over GnuCash. Almost all
of the fields have tab completion. For example, to create an invoice, I type
the first few letters of a companies name, tab, and it fills in the company
name and address. This works for accounts, tenders, and pretty much anything
that is stored in another table.
I'm still learning how to use everything, but it's very well thought out.
Initially, I didn't realize I could create a sale by entering the tender (Visa,
American Express, etc.) on an invoice. I was creating an invoice, then a
payment against the invoice, which took me a lot longer. I still need to
figure out how to make invoices default to Account type rather than Item.
The account reconciliation feature works great. It helped me track down a
transaction for which Authorize.Net
didn't send me a receipt email.
Quasar has a ton of features related to running retail stores. I don't need to
deal with multiple stores and cash registers, but it's great that it's there if
I ever open up that pub.
Some of the cool features that I'll actually use include:
- Customer Groups. You can put customers into arbitrary groups and then run
queries based on those groups.
- Cloning. You can create a copy of a journal entry, customer, invoice,
etc.
- Recurring billing. I haven't played with this yet, but combined
with the data import features, I'm hoping to automate the accounting of
recurring online transactions.
Quasar has a good chance of becoming the de facto accounting package in the
open source world.
business » accounting | Permanent Link
