Tax payments and filing

Tax payments and filing is optional. A business below the registration threshold has nothing to remit, so the page stays out of the way until you turn it on under Settings → Features. It can't be turned off again while you have tax rates configured, because tax you collect on the authority's behalf has to stay visible.

What you owe

Upscale works out your liability for a period from your transactions rather than asking you to type it in:

  output tax collected on sales
- input tax paid on purchases, where recoverable
- tax withheld at source on your behalf
+/- any adjustments you have posted
- payments already made against the period
= what is still owed

Typing the figure in by hand is how a tax payment quietly stops agreeing with the return that justified it. Every component here comes from the ledger, so the number you confirm is the number your books support.

You can run it on either cash or accrual basis, which matters where you are taxed on receipts rather than invoices.

Recording a payment

A tax payment settles a period, not a set of invoices. Choose the tax, the period and the account you paid from, and Upscale defaults the amount to what is owed.

The figure that was owed at the time is stored on the payment, so the document always shows the number that justified it even if the ledger moves afterwards.

A refund is the same document with the direction reversed. There is no separate refund type to learn.

Adjustments

Penalties, interest and corrections from the authority are recorded as adjustments against the period, increasing or decreasing what is owed.

Without this, people fudge the payment amount to make it match the demand, and the connection between the return and the books is lost.

Marking a return filed

When you have submitted, mark the period filed. Upscale stores the figures exactly as they stood at that moment, along with your filing reference.

Filing records. It posts nothing.

Transactions dated after you filed

A backdated invoice or bill landing in a period you have already filed does not silently change the figures you submitted. That would leave your records disagreeing with the return you sent, with nothing to show why.

Instead the movement is shown separately as activity since filing, so you can carry it into the next return. That is how VAT regimes actually expect corrections to be handled.

The filed figures stay exactly as filed.

The tax report

The tax report reads the same ledger lines, so what it shows and what a payment settles cannot disagree. It is basis aware, currency correct, and separates output tax, recoverable input tax and tax withheld on your behalf.