Beginners question, confused between real bank accounts and gnucash accounts

[Dale Alspach]

I am not sure that I understand your question. Let me try to rephrase:

You have a mutual Fund XYZ. You sell 1 share with a 
cost basis of $100 and capital gains $15.
You deposit $115 into your checking account.

Credit Investment Mutual Fund XYZ $115 (sell 1 share at $115)
Debit checking $115

Alternate View
Credit Investment Mutual Fund XYZ $100 (sell 1 share at cost basis $100)
Credit Income Capital Gains $15
Debit checking $115

In the alternate view the Investment Mutual Fund XYZ is tracking the cost basis 
for all transactions. Capital gains and losses, when realized, are tracked as 
positive and negative income. 

Is the Alternate View what you want? 

This has some ramification for satisfying 
the tax authorities. In my limited experience the IRS, for 
example, wants to see the selling price and cost basis. If you use this, you 
may want more information in the description so that when looking at the 
capital gains income account you can readily see information about the 
transaction,e.g., Sold 1 share of XYZ.

Dale
-------------------------------------

   - ​I currently enter the full fund distribution amount into my 'Assets-
   Investment
   ​s-Mutual Fund
   -XYZ
   ​'​

   ​account and link the total amount as a deposit to
   my checking account.
   ​

   - Concurrently, I manually maintain ​a second account '
   Income-Investment
   ​ Income
   -XYZ'
   ​ to record the capital gains portion of the distribution.

This works and is easy for me to comprehend, but I am driven to do things
the proper way and I sense that another solution should would be better.
​It
seems to me that gnuCash
​can be used to
 handle this and that it is me that doesn't understand the logic and
mechanism needed to record these profits into my
​personal account book.

I'd like to spit the distribution into two parts, gain and taxfree, but
then have the total appear as one entry in my checking account.


Could you illustrate another solution for me,
or perhaps point me to a solution previously discussed in this forum?

many thanks
ed (retired, and using gnuCash to keep food on the table and my mind in 4th
gear :-)