[GNC] Please suggest approach to track a category of disbursements

[ornd25 at tutanota.com]

I would like to track IRA disbursements. (For those who don't know, an Individual Retirement Account is a US category of retirement investments in which taxes are not paid until the funds are withdrawn, i.e., "disbursed." In our case and these are disbursements from an IRA mutual fund and will be re-invested in a taxable mutual fund.

1. I'm currently using the simplest way - Cr losing IRA mutual fund $100, Dr gaining taxable fund $80, Dr withholding tax $20. I keep track of where the various distributions are by using the term "Distributions" in the GnuCash Description block. That way I can easily find them.

2. I tried setting up an "IRA Distributions" account but I found it unsatisfactory for various reasons, at least the way I set it up. It require two transactions instead of one. First, Cr losing IRA fund $100 and Dr IRA Distributions. Then, from the "IRA Distributions" account, Dr "IRA Distributions" $100, Cr "Withholding tax" $20, and Dr gaining taxable account $80.

I had two problems I had with the second approach before I returned to the simple approach. It abstracted the re-investment and the withholding tax from the actual distribution and I found it confusing, even after I created it. Also, the "IRA Distributions" account was self-zeroing, as my debits and credits were equal - I was hoping for an approach that would clearly show my distributions over time.

Between my wife's accounts and mine - different flavors of tax-benefitted and taxable accounts - I'm tracking 20+ accounts and I would like some suggestions as to a simple, clear way to do it.