Chapter 8 - investment accounts

[Chris Good]

Re:
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Chapter-8-investment-accounts-tc4665181
.html#none :

> Sep 09, 2015; 7:19am Alton Brantley 
> One problem with the View Lots screen is that it does not adjust the
capital gains or loss for the commissions, thereby overstating a gain or
understating a loss. 
>
> I work around this by tracking lots as you did, then, at the end, I add an
adjustment in the Realized Gain/Loss transaction to credit the gain/loss
with the sum of the commissions. 
>
> Example: 
>
> 1. Buy 100 shares XYZ at 50 
>
________________________Shares_________Price__________BUY/Debit_______SELL/C
redit__ 
> Stock:XYZ                100.          50.            500.00 
> Investment Expense                                     50.00 
> Bank:Cash                                                            
550.00 
>
> 2. Sell 100 shares of XYZ at 55 
>
________________________Shares_________Price__________BUY/Debit_______SELL/C
redit__ 
> Stock:XYZ               -100.          55.00                        
 550.00 
> Investment Expense                                     50.00 
> Bank:Cash                                             500.00 
>
> Upon matching up lots, a Realized Gain/Loss transaction appears in the
stock Ledger 
>
________________________Shares_________Price__________BUY/Debit_______SELL/C
redit__ 
> Stock:XYZ                                              50.00 
> Investment Gains                                                      
50.00 
>
> This would show that you gained $50. In fact, you paid $550, received
$500, so you LOST $50. How do you account for that? 
> You add as an expense offset the sum of the Investment Expenses and adjust
to Investment Gains/Losses to balance. 
>
>
________________________Shares_________Price__________BUY/Debit_______SELL/C
redit__ 
> Stock:XYZ                                               50.00            
                 <-These two splits are the above transaction 
> Investment Gains                                                      
50.00               <- 
> Investment Gains                                       100.00            
                 <-These two splits added to above transaction 
> Investment Expense                                                  
 100.00               <- 
>
>
> Now, when you look at your Investment Gains/Losses, you will see that you
gained $50 in stock price but gave back $100 in commissions, yielding a net
cap loss of $50 

Following my documentation of using lots for calculating investment capital
gains, I want to add something about commission as per above.
However, I don't think the last split (crediting Investment Expense 100.00)
is the correct account. If you use Investment Expense (commission), the net
commission for this stock holding is zero.
Can some-one with more accounting qualifications than I please suggest a
name and account type for this last split?

Or is doing it this way not the way it should be done...
I can imagine the argument that if you are going to include commission in
capital gains calculations, then you should enter the net price (including
commission), and not record commission as its own split, regardless of this
adding an misleading price into the price database. You could just add the
commission as part of the transaction description if you wish to track it.

Regards, Chris Good

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