Capital Gains Cost Basis by Lot Reporting

[wyler4paw]

Is it possible to get cost basis reporting at lot level on the Capital Gains report using the standard edition? The only post I can find regarding this appears to be a 'wash sales' option available on the professional + edition.

[Mark]

Hi wyler4paw,

The short answer to your question is "no". In the Personal version the Capital Gains report will show one line item per sell transaction. You cannot make it show each buy lot separately in the Personal version. In the Pro/Advisor versions you can turn on wash sale rules, and then each buy lot is shown on a separate line.

[FinnishDGI]

Mark, could you elaborate why this is the case? Would it be possible to implement this in future versions? I'm currently reviewing different portfolio management software to transition into, and Fund manager appears to fulfill my needs almost completely - accompanied with very easy-to-use interface. However, for tax reporting purposes I need the report of capital gains/losses by specific lot - without that capability the tax reports are an unnecessarily large hassle.

Acquiring and using the professional version would not be a problem, but if I have understood correctly, it won't solve my issue. For me, the issue is that the wash sales rules do not apply to my country's (Finland) tax code at all. Is there a way to modify the report or the US wash sale rules utilized by FM, to make this reporting setting more applicable to countries other than US? If not, could that be something you would consider implementing in the future versions?

[Mark]

Hi FinnishDGI,

You can get cost basis by "sell" lot in any version. If your sell transaction sold shares from more than 1 "buy" lots, these buy lots will be combined together, to show the total basis for the sold lot. If you turn on wash sale rules, FM will separate out each "buy" lot on a separate line. For example, say you sold 100 shares that were from a 60 share buy plus another 40 share buy. Without the wash sale rule on, there will be just one line item, showing the sell of the 100 shares. With the wash sale rule on, there will be 2 lines, one for the 60 shares, and one for the 40 shares.

[FinnishDGI]

Hi Mark,

Perhaps I was a bit unclear in my post. I specifically need the cost basis and the calculated capital gains by the buy lots, not by the sell lots, which are easily available in FM.

When the wash sale option are turned on, the US wash sales rules are applied and the calculated cost basis and the corresponding capital gains are not applicable to my country's tax code.

Without wash sales option

Capture2.PNG (3.93 KiB) Viewed 3587 times

With wash sales option turned on (total sum of lot-wise cost basis = 1.344,15) :

Capture.PNG (12.89 KiB) Viewed 3587 times

For my purposes, the sum of the lot-wise cost bases should match the total cost basis presented in the first picture (1.249,33), i.e. not applying the US wash sale rules in calculation of the lot-wise cost basis. When the US wash sale rules are applied, cost basis of the last lot sold in the second picture is 283,18, and to be applicable to my purposes it should be 188,26.

To rephrase my question: Is it possible to modify the generated report or the wash sale rules utilized by the software to accomplish this?

[Mark]

Hi FinnishDGI,

Thanks, I understand. No, it is not a supported feature today. This format is only an option when you turn on wash sale rules. There are a couple of possibilities:

1) We can look into adding support for this. It shouldn't be too hard.

2) You can record your sell transactions to match your buy lots. Instead of recording 1 sell for 600 shares if you record 4 sells of 175, 150, 175, and 100 as in your example, then you can get what you want.

[FinnishDGI]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for taking time to respond so swiftly, and thank you for pointing out the option 2! This workaround works beautifully for my current situation and needs. Furthermore, when I want the separated transactions to be reported together I can just use the "Combine common Transactions by Investment" - option.

However, I can see this workaround might get a bit tedious at times when one trades more frequently. Hence, I think in a long-run the adding the option to split the reporting by buy-lots would be a great addition to a great software.

[Mark]

Hi FinnishDGI,

Glad that helped. Thanks for the feedback, we can consider this option for a future update.