Stocks & Capital Gains (Feature Request

Mon Aug 13 23:56:52 EDT 2007

Hi!

On 8/13/07, Joshua Moore <moorevineyard at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, since I haven't seen any responses I assume this feature doesn't
> exist
> yet.

I haven't seen it, though I don't use that part of gnucash.

Is this an appropriate place to request it?  Also, does anyone else
> even want this feature?  It's pretty important to me, but I guess it would
> fall pretty low on a priority list if no one else is interested.

This is a good place, though you should also add an enhancement request to
bugzilla: http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Bugzilla

Ah, I remember the ACB (*tries not to think of the year when we had _three_
different percentages of taxable capital gains, dependent on the time of
year*)

I know this is a Canadian tax feature (not sure about other countries). It's
definitely something I could use in the future, so there is interest.

Nathan

>From: "Joshua Moore" <moorevineyard at hotmail.com>
> >To: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> >Subject: Stocks & Capital Gains
> >Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:41:47 -0400
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> >
> >The email below is one of the more recent posts that I've found relating
> to
> >tracking the cost basis of stocks.  Just to be clear, here's my
> situation.
> >I have an old mutual fund that has had periodic investments for the past
> 10
> >years and occasional sales.  The original way I calculated capital gains
> >for any sales was by using an average cost basis (figured with a simple
> >spreadsheet), not first-in-first-out.  It looks like gnucash does not
> have
> >a built in way of handling this for a sale entry.  Is there a plan to
> >include this functionality?  This also seems essential for someone who
> >wants to "close the books" at the end of a fiscal year.  If the person is
> >using an average cost basis for tax purposes, the value to carry forward
> >into the new books needs to be based on average cost in order to
> calculate
> >any future capital gains properly, right?
> >
> >----
> >I've been puzzled by a few questions regarding using gnucash to track
> >stock investments.
> >
> >The help file shows how to track the purchase, sale, and value of
> >stocks.  When recording the sale of the stock, one has to include an
> >amount from Income:Capital Gains representing the profit on the sale.
> >In order to know this amount, I need to track the cost of the shares.
> >For stocks, Gnucash seems to track the cost and unrealized gains
> >internally so that one does not need an account hierarchy like that
> >shown in the help file for the Degas painting.
> >
> >How do I use gnucash to determine (possibly years and many individual
> >purchases later) what my cost was for the stock?
> >
> >If I make a subaccount called cost, and use it in the purchase of the
> >stock, it shows a negative value.  Is this reasonable?
> >
> >The cash shows as still being in the parent investment account.  In
> >fact, the amount of cash in just the parent investment account would
> >show the total cost of all stocks and cash in the account.  This does
> >not seem right, as I need to track the amount of actual cash in the
> >investment account, too.
> >
> >In Canada, the commision to buy and sell the stock is added to the
> >"adjusted cost base".  So I don't wish to show commisions as simply an
> >expense account.  Should I record it as an expense and then record
> >another transaction from Income:capital gains to reduce the gains by the
> >amount of the commision?  This would certainly work for the sell
> >commision.  I would need a way to track the buy commision as part of the
> >cost of the stock without altering the price per share.
> >
> >How does one handle consolidations and splits of the number of shares of
> >stock?  We have a number of exchange traded funds in Canada which do odd
> >things with their capital gains.  So that the fund is not liable for
> >capital gains taxes, they distribute their capital gains to the share
> >holders.  The shareholders then pay the capital gains (and the amount of
> >the gain is added to the "adjusted cost base" of the shares due to the
> >following).  The distributed capital gains are reinvested in shares of
> >the fund.  Immediately, a consolidation is done so that the ending
> >number of shares is identical to the number of shares prior to the
> >capital gains distribution.  The price of the shares and number
> >consolidated is not known, only the amount of the capital gains
> >distribution.  (I have previously recorded these in Quicken using
> >arbitrary numbers of shares since the important part is how this affects
> >my cost of the shares, rather than the exact number of shares.)  This
> >produces odd numbers in a consolidation, such as 101 shares consolidated
> >into 100.
> >
> >Clearly, it is important (and nontrivial) to track the cost of these
> >shares for tax purposes.  (I note that Quicken and my brokerage do not
> >agree on the cost basis of these shares in my RSP.  For nonregistered
> >accounts, the broker does not calculate the cost basis, and I must do it
> >myself.)
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >_________________________________________________________________
> >See what you're getting into…before you go there
> >http://newlivehotmail.com/?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_viral_preview_0507
> >
>
>
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