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Fidelity Capital Gains Distribution Miscategorized as Dividend Transaction

Scooterlam

QW 2019 HBR R14.23 here....

I downloaded Fidelity transactions on Friday and received 3 transactions into my IRA account.   Two of them were entered separately into Quicken as dividends followed by a dividend reinvestment transaction. The transactions relate to the mutual fund FPURX, Fidelity Puritan Fund.

One of those "dividends" appeared to be a Capital Gains Distribution (CGD). Looking at my Fidelity activity on their site it did confirm one as a long term CGD and one as a Dividend. But, Quicken has recorded the CGD as a dividend.   Online, I noted that Fidelity recorded this as a LT CGD.

So, I looked into the OFX log file to see what I could see. SEE IMAGE for a snippet of that file. I found 2 entries for the two reported "dividend" transactions.

While not an expert in OFX interpretation, it appears that Fidelity has recorded the actual CGD as <INCOMETYPE> DIV rather than CGD (or whatever the OFX standard uses to specify CGD, if there is one).   Oddly, I noticed too that the <MEMO> tag does reference this transaction correctly as a Long Term Capital Gain.

I looked at the OFX entry for the dividend as well. Both <MEMO> and <INCOME TYPE> are consistent.   SEE IMAGE. No issue there.

My first impression is that is that Fidelity is sending the wrong data for <INCOMETYPE> and Quicken is simply reporting what it parses. In this case recording an actual Capital Gains Distribution transaction as a Dividend transaction in Quicken.

I have not figured out why the <MEMO> field references "Long-Term Capital Gain" when there is an <INCOMETYPE> that can reference both ST and LT CGs.   Was use of this memo field a work around to distinguish CGD from LT / ST capital gains from sale of shares.? Not sure....

I would expect (regardless of tax treatment of the investment account) that DIVs are distinguished from LT/ST CGDs are distinguished from LT/ST capital gains.

Anyone else see this issue with Fidelity or have previously looked into this? Is the first call to Fidelity? Is this Fidelity's issue? Or, could it be a Quicken workaround issue that was once fixed but not broken again (still thinking about that MEMO field)? Or, something else?

Any insights to share?

Scott
QW 2019 HBR R14.23

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Comments

Rocket J Squirrel

I don’t know how this can be anything other than Fidelity’s fault. You are correct they are sending the wrong INCOMETYPE.

Whenever I meet with my Fidelity rep, I gripe about Fido sending bad transaction data to Quicken. I am not optimistic Fido will ever fix it.

Scooterlam

I don’t know how this can be anything other than Fidelity’s fault. You are correct they are sending the wrong INCOMETYPE.

Whenever I meet with my Fidelity rep, I gripe about Fido sending bad transaction data to Quicken. I am not optimistic Fido will ever fix it.

Thanks. I sent a message to Fidelity today. Their Quicken support, in the past, have been responsive and helpful. Let's see if they toss it back to Quicken, as a Quicken issue, or if they take the issue onboard!

Will revert with any followup from Fidelity....

Scott

NotACPA

I don’t know how this can be anything other than Fidelity’s fault. You are correct they are sending the wrong INCOMETYPE.

Whenever I meet with my Fidelity rep, I gripe about Fido sending bad transaction data to Quicken. I am not optimistic Fido will ever fix it.

NOTE that in the Memo field, Fido sent the correct info. I've been complaining about this for years also ... to no effect ... and I'm a client in Fidelity's "Private Client Group".

SO, I carefully review that Memo field, and edit the transaction (before saving it) to have the correct "Action".

unknown

I don’t know how this can be anything other than Fidelity’s fault. You are correct they are sending the wrong INCOMETYPE.

Whenever I meet with my Fidelity rep, I gripe about Fido sending bad transaction data to Quicken. I am not optimistic Fido will ever fix it.

I can also confirm that Fidelity has the same incorrect income type reporting on 08-Dec-2017 for the Fidelity Contra fund. The memo again list long-term capital gains but the transaction is labeled as dividend. Correcting this by hand through transaction editing is not hard, but now I will have to check every dividend transaction from Fidelity by hand to correct if necessary.

Jim_Harman

Because an IRA account is tax deferred, this doesn't really matter for tax reporting purposes.

Of course as NotACPA suggests, you can always correct the downloaded transactions in Quicken so that they match reality.

I have a 401k with another FI that insists on downloading reinvested Dividends as reinvested Interest even though the Memo says EARNINGS - DIVIDENDS. Whenever I sell securities, they include unnecessary transactions that show the realized gain.

unknown

Because an IRA account is tax deferred, this doesn't really matter for tax reporting purposes.

Of course as NotACPA suggests, you can always correct the downloaded transactions in Quicken so that they match reality.

I have a 401k with another FI that insists on downloading reinvested Dividends as reinvested Interest even though the Memo says EARNINGS - DIVIDENDS. Whenever I sell securities, they include unnecessary transactions that show the realized gain.

Having it call it interest instead of dividends I would consider a minor inconvenience that I wouldn't even both to correct in an IRA/401K.

It can be worse. For my wife's 401K (Merrill Lynch) they send all the transactions a "bought", even though in fact some of them are reinvested dividends.

Which of course makes the cash balance go negative. So I have to fix those up manually. Luckily there are only a couple and at most they are monthly.