spinoffs in gnucash

[Dustin Henning]

Stuart, 

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user-bounces+the00dustin=gmx.net at gnucash.org
[mailto:gnucash-user-bounces+the00dustin=gmx.net at gnucash.org] On Behalf Of
Stuart McGraw
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 03:29
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: spinoffs in gnucash

(Actually, I think I can handle the spinoff proper but I an confused about
the cash-in-lieu.  Since the SpinCo basis is $3/share, the .5 share is only
$1.50.  So that leaves $8.50 of the cash-in-lieu as what?  Capital gains?

-----

I'm not sure I'd do this right in my personal books, and I don't have
accounting experience, so I'm not going to sketch it out.  However, to
answer your question regarding the $8.50, this would depend on your broker
and/or the tax laws of you country.  For instance, assuming the broker
properly reports your basis and gains to you, you might be able to check
now, or at least at the end of the year.  Assuming the broker doesn't report
this information to you, then you would have to talk to an accountant in
your jurisdiction or read up on the relevant tax laws yourself.  I would
guess that either the $8.50 becomes cash, very slightly increasing your
per-share cost basis (from it's divided by 4 amount [IOW, leaving the
appropriate cost basis alone]), or it would be capital gains, and as such,
very slightly decrease your per-share cost basis (from it's divided by 4
amount [IOW, lowering the appropriate cost basis by $8.50]).  Unfortunately,
this certainly isn't much help, but I wanted to point out that you are
basically asking for tax advice from people who can't necessarily legally
give it and may not necessarily give it to you for the correct jurisdiction
even if they can legally give it.

Dustin
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