GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 394548
Better reporting for Capital Gains
Last modified: 2018-06-29 21:22:01 UTC
It would be nice to have a report that listed historical transactions for a particular stock with the new Adjusted Cost Base each time there was new purchase, dividend etc. (The ACB does not change with a sale.) Presently If you have a security and you buy, then sell, then buy again, the results in the Advanced portfolio are not correct. I believe there are already comments to that effect, however I believe an additional report would be much appreciated by many users at tax time. Something that would include the likes of: Security #1 Buy 100 @ 1.00 ACB: 1.00 Sell 50 @ 1.50 ACB: 1.00 (doesn't change) Buy 100 @ 1.75 ACB: 1.50 ie: ((50*1.00) + (100*1.75)) / 150 Security #2 Buy 200 @ 2.43 ACB: 82.30 Buy... Note that the above doesn't have to include any quote or current value. Just the true average cost basis at each transaction. Caveat: I'm not an accountant by any means but I believe that the above is correct.
Advanced Portfolio bugs are already mentioned in bug#346062. Basically you're asking for a new report that presents the capital gains as explained... let's hope someone is going to implement this.
Thanks. Maybe I should add my comments to the other bug? My thought is just that it seems to me that it will always be more difficult to produce an accurate figure for capital gains for a given year, unless it is handled *something* like the above. Or perhaps if in the options for the existing report there were date selectors to limit the report to securities for which there are sell transactions in that year? Anyways, the point being that sometimes you may want to know what your all your gains have been for the last 10 years, (The existing report attempts to do this), but for tax purposes, you only want to know the exact gain for last year. If you have a preceding Buy Sell of a given security for a previous year, it should not be included in a capital gain calculation.
I've been gathering notes for a new portfolio report that would essentially be a "portfolio performance" report. The current advanced portfolio report provides a snapshot of the state of the portfolio at a given time taking all history into account. This is obviously a problem in many cases. I'd like to produce a report that allows specifying a start and end date (see bug #312049) and then produces starting, ending and delta values for the commodities. Things to report on would be cost basis, income, value etc. and I think this kin of report would fill the need here as well as in #312049. Note on the tables in comment #1: It is my understanding that the way you are showing ACB only holds true if you use an Average method for computing basis. There is no "per share" basis per se, unless you use the Average method. If you use something else: FIFO, lots, etc, then the only information that has any real meaning is the total basis of held shares, or a breakdown of each lot and its per share basis (a little unwieldy to report on). For example, using FIFO: Buy 10@100: value = 1000, total basis = 1000, basis per share = 100 fine, but: Buy another 10@120: value = 2400 (20@new price of 120), total basis = 2200, basis per share = ??? doesn't compute because some shares are 100/share and some are 120/share. make sense?
Thanks very much for work you are doing on reports. Yes the ACB per share is an average calcuation, and includes commisisons fees expenses at time of purchase. This is the *only* method accepted in Canada (and I believe other countries as well.) The principle is that the ACB will change with every addition or purchase, and will *always* stay the same on a redemption. When you sell, you use the last ACB per share to calculate capital gains. So for you example: buy another 10@120 value =2400. Total Shares owned now =20. Total paid 1000+1200=2200. ACB per share then = 11 after this second purchase. If you now sell 5 shares @ 12, (doesn't matter how much) you then still have 15 * (your last calculated ACB per share=11) for an Adjusted Cost Basis of 165 for your remaining shares. The next time you purchase some shares, the ACB per share will change. http://www.gummy-stuff.org/ACB.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjusted_Cost_Base
GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. The new URL for this bug is https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=394548. Please continue processing the bug there and please update any external references or bookmarks.