Summarise Event Sales Tax, VAT, or GST

Your accountant asks for two numbers after the conference: how much tax you charged on ticket sales, and how much you paid on everything you bought. You have forty receipts, three invoices and a vague memory that the venue included VAT but the printer did not. Event Tax Summary reads the income and cost entries in your event project and groups the tax by type and rate, so those two numbers, and the difference between them, come out of the data instead of out of your head.

It applies no country's rules. It will not tell you what is owed, reclaimable or exempt. It does the arithmetic on the rates you entered and lists what could not be counted, which is exactly the groundwork a professional wants handed over.

What the summary contains

The page shows three cards: tax on income, tax on costs and the net. Below them are two tables, Income and Costs, with one row per tax type and rate and four columns: Tax, Net, Tax and Gross. The tax types are sales tax, VAT and GST, plus a "No tax" row for entries without a rate. The net card also says which way the difference runs: charged more than paid, paid more than charged, or even.

Each entry is split the same way. If the amount you entered already includes tax, the tool takes the tax out of it: gross minus gross divided by one plus the rate. If the amount excludes tax, it adds the tax on top. So a $100.00 entry at 8 percent shows tax of 8.00 whether you typed 100 as the pre-tax price or 108 as the total paid, as long as the "includes tax" setting matches reality.

A worked example: a 300-person conference in pounds

Take a conference with the project currency set to GBP. Ticket sales of £12,000 were taken with 20 percent VAT included, and a sponsor paid £2,000 with no tax. On the cost side, the venue was £4,800 including VAT, catering £3,000 before VAT, printing £360 including VAT, the speaker fee £1,500 with no tax, and stage hire £900 which the supplier called a VAT item, but the entry has no rate. One coach booking of €500 was entered in euros.

The summary shows:

• Income: "No tax" £2,000.00 net, and VAT 20% with net £10,000.00, tax £2,000.00, gross £12,000.00.
• Costs: VAT 20% with net £7,300.00, tax £1,460.00, gross £8,760.00 across three entries, and "No tax" £2,400.00 across two. The two include the stage hire, because without a rate it is counted as having no tax.
• Tax collected on income £2,000.00, tax paid on costs £1,460.00, net £540.00, shown as more charged than paid.

Two notices sit above the tables. One says the stage hire entry is marked as taxed but has no rate, so no tax is counted for it. The other says one entry is in another currency and not included. That is the point of the tool. Those £900 and €500 lines would otherwise vanish into the totals without a trace. Fix the stage hire by adding 20 as its rate, and the paid figure rises by £150 to £1,610.00, while the net drops to £390.00.

How the tax type gets onto an entry

The type matters because the summary groups by it, and different tools set it differently:

• Receipt to Expense Sheet reads receipt photos and PDFs and chooses a type from the wording: CGST, SGST, IGST or GST lines give GST; VAT, MwSt, USt, TVA, IVA or BTW lines give VAT; anything else is sales tax. If a receipt lists two tax lines, such as CGST and SGST, it adds them and notes the breakdown. Check the rate it works out on every row before you add it to the project.
• Receipt Maker and Purchase Order Generator use the tax label you type: a label containing VAT is VAT, one containing GST, HST or PST is GST, and anything else is sales tax.
• The Expense Tracker stores any tax you enter as sales tax. If your event runs on VAT or GST, bring costs in through the receipt reader (it picks VAT or GST from the wording on the receipt) or through the documents above, otherwise the summary will show sales tax where your accountant expects VAT.

Steps

1. Put every income and cost in the project, each with its tax rate. Tick "includes tax" or not according to the document.
2. Open Event Tax Summary and read the notices first. Missing rates and other-currency entries are listed there.
3. Fix each listed entry, then come back. The tables update at once.
4. Compare each tax row with your own paperwork for one or two entries, to be sure net, tax and gross are what you expect.
5. Press Copy for text you can paste into an email, CSV for a spreadsheet with the columns Side, Tax, Rate %, Net, Tax amount, Gross and Entries, or PDF for a printable summary.
6. Send it to your accountant with the project file saved from Save project, so they can see the entries behind the totals.

The PDF and CSV downloads count as one usage each. Event Tax Summary is a Premium Application, with 2 trial uses a day before a day pass or plan applies. Copy is not metered.

Common mistakes

Trusting the net without reading the notices. An entry with no rate means the tax paid is understated. Mixing currencies: entries in a currency other than the project's are left out of every total, so convert them or change the project currency before you export. Entering ticket sales net on one line and gross on the next, then wondering why the VAT row is odd. Treating the page as a return. It says on screen, and in the PDF footer, that it is information only and not tax advice; rules differ by country, region and type of sale.

Summary

Enter each income and cost with its rate, clear the notices, and let the page group the tax by type and rate. Event Tax Summary gives your accountant tax collected, tax paid and the net in one file, and Event Profit Ledger shows the same entries as a profit statement. More planning tools are listed under event tools.

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Does your event cross borders, and would a view split by currency help? Tell us on the contact page.