[GNC] Capital gains

[john]

> On Jun 23, 2023, at 11:44, Fred Tydeman <tydeman.fred at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If I sell a stock for a profit, I can think of two ways to record the
> transaction.
> 
> 1)  Record the sale with the sell price.  This results in less shares in
> the stock
>     account, and more cash somewhere else; and two trending transactions.
>     This shows up as four splits.
>     But, then, how do I find out the profit  in a GnuCash report?
> 
> 2) Record the sale with the buy price along with a transfer to an explicit
>     capital gains income account (and the above four splits).
> 
> Does it matter?  Which is better?

You must do both, see Chapter 11 of the Tutorial and Concepts Guide (https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_capgain.html).

And BTW that applies to every disposal of any commodity that isn't your home currency, even when you have a foreign bank account and use it to defray an expense, and it's easier in the long run if you do so when doing an asset transfer like buying stock in a foreign currency.

Fail and you'll never get a balanced Trial Balance report.


Regards,
John Ralls