Cap gains question

[Steve Wallace]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 03:55:15PM -0300, Jon Lapham wrote:
> Steve Wallace wrote:
> >On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 12:12:37PM -0300, Jon Lapham wrote:
> >
> >>So, short term cap gains are considered regular income in terms of
> >>taxes, while long term gets the cap gains tax break?
> >
> >
> >Not exactly, two different concepts.  Although I believe in the US,
> >short term gains are *currently* subject to the same tax rate as
> >ordinary income, they are reported separately on Schedule D and are
> >subject to different tax rules and treatment.  Therefore short term
> >gains from sales need to be reported seperately from other sources of
> >income.
> >
> 
> huh, interesting.  So, really, for investments, we should have an
> income account structure like this:
> 
> -Income -Unrealized Gains -Realized Gains (short term) -Realized Gains
> (long term)
> 
> Where the definitions of long and short term would vary from country
> to country.

Perhaps, but I am not at all clear on how to best structure things in
terms of GnuCash accounts.  To me the key point is that there needs
ultimately to be a report that shows at least the following for each
sale:

Date of sale, date acquired, proceeds from sale, cost or other basis.

Calculated values for holding period and gain or loss would also be
nice.

I guess there is currently no way to do this even with a custom report
because the underlying concepts of 'tax lots' and basis are under
development.

-- 
Steve Wallace