Accounting question: Switching retirement account managers

[David Carlson]

On 10/13/2013 2:27 PM, Michael DeBusk wrote:
> On 2013-10-12 20:47, David Carlson wrote:
>
>> If you just do as you are suggesting,  using the corresponding prices
>> for the sale and purchase, your cost basis, if it matters, remains the
>> same, does it not?
>
> It would, but it seems to me that the unrealized capital gains would
> show up in reports as income for this year. It wouldn't break anything
> in the real world, I suppose.
>
>
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To be precisely accurate, you should adjust for the realized capital
gain/loss as outlined in the GnuCash documentation in your sale
transactions, but I think that you can enter an offsetting realized
capital loss/gain in your purchase transactions, effectively setting the
round trip net realized gain/loss to zero and restoring your previous
cost basis.  I think that will also put correct numbers into your
reports.  If you happen to run a balance report for a date during that
gap, you would just see a cash balance in that brokerage account. 

Since the realized capital gains and losses add up to zero, it would
probably not hurt to omit both.

Unrealized gains or losses usually do not appear in income reports,
unless you specifically configure your data to show them.

David C