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How to Update historical stock price for specific "Lots" ?

r-e-l

I have many transactions where my employer, part of benefits deposited stocks to my broker account. (every six month for many years - added a few).

What I didn't realize/paid attention at the time is that when the stocks were added, there wasn't a stock price. I assume because it was not traded however, for Tax reasons, I will need to report the value of the stock grant no matter how small it is.
For that, I guess I can use the close day value of the stock on the day of the grant.

So now the question is:
Can I go an edit (in an easy way as we are talking about ~ 100 lots) the price of the stock on the day it was given?

essentially for any "add" transaction that is missing a stock price, edit the per price value by the value of the close on that day.

thanks

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Jim_Harman

Editing the Add transactions should do the trick. Back up your Quicken file first, in case something goes wrong.

If this is an Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP) your cost may not be the closing price on the date you received the shares. In that case you should have a statement from your employer that says what the tax cost is.

r-e-l

thanks. its regular stocks.
I was hoping there is a way to download "historical price" to that day otherwise ... its lots of manual steps.

Jim_Harman

You can download up to 5 years of historical prices, but:

-- daily prices only go back 1 month, before that they are weekly or monthly.

-- the downloaded prices are stored in Quicken's price history, but they do not affect transactions or cost basis, only performance reporting.

splasher

I don't think you need the price but the total cost of each lot to establish the basis. The price will only give the cost of the stock without knowing if there was a fee associated with the lot which would need to be accounted for.

Tom Young

If indeed you simply used "added" transactions then there should be no problem editing those to enter a correct per share cost.

However, it would be easier to give to guidance as to what per share cost to use if we understood the employer's "plan" better. "every six month for many years" does sound like an ESPP as that's a commonly used period of time, but even that doesn't give anyone much direction since there are both Qualified and Nonqualifed ESPP plans and the calculation of basis can and usually does vary between the two. Were you contributing any money to get these shares? Was there an impact on your W-2 - compensation - for the stock received? The fact that the shares were not publicly traded certainly doesn't mean the stock has no basis - as you know - but if these were simply "grants" of some amount of stock with no contribution on your part then there should have been a W-2 effect.

r-e-l

If indeed you simply used "added" transactions then there should be no problem editing those to enter a correct per share cost.

However, it would be easier to give to guidance as to what per share cost to use if we understood the employer's "plan" better. "every six month for many years" does sound like an ESPP as that's a commonly used period of time, but even that doesn't give anyone much direction since there are both Qualified and Nonqualifed ESPP plans and the calculation of basis can and usually does vary between the two. Were you contributing any money to get these shares? Was there an impact on your W-2 - compensation - for the stock received? The fact that the shares were not publicly traded certainly doesn't mean the stock has no basis - as you know - but if these were simply "grants" of some amount of stock with no contribution on your part then there should have been a W-2 effect.

Thanks.
No those are regular stocks that I get from my employer.
Every six month (Feb and Aug) my employer deposit X number of stocks to my Fidelity account.
When those transactions being downloaded from the broker account they came as:
"Added Shares " with X number of stocks. It doesn't show price because its "add" stocks rather than "bought stocks"
(Not my choice, this is how Fidelity reported them. I think from their perspective, it makes sense as I need used my fund to pay for them)

When the stocks are being deposit to my account, they are indeed considered regular income hence they are showing in the W2 and are fully taxed.

However, if don't sell them immediately, the margin between the sell price of the stock minus the stock price on day of the grant is subject to regular capital gains/lose rules.
Hence I want to enter the stock price on the day of the grant to know optimize my taxes.
Some of those stocks are "under water" so I might want to sell those stocks first but for that I need to add the history.

makes more sense?

r-e-l

You can download up to 5 years of historical prices, but:

-- daily prices only go back 1 month, before that they are weekly or monthly.

-- the downloaded prices are stored in Quicken's price history, but they do not affect transactions or cost basis, only performance reporting.

and then I need to do manual update per transaction ? In ideal world I am looking for something like:
Right click on a lot, select update stock price, best on the day of the transaction, the price will be updated.

The download of the stock is essentially just a table - a look up table where I can just manually copy the value from the table and manually paste it to each transaction.

Anything special with the Quicken table? How to use it? If its only to get a specific stock of price, I can go to web sites and do lookup. I feel I am missing a feature that can make my life easier...

mshiggins

I agree with splasher, the total cost of the lot along with number of shares is what gets reported to the IRS for covered securities.

Fidelity should have trade confirmations that provide the total cost for the lot.

r-e-l

I agree with splasher, the total cost of the lot along with number of shares is what gets reported to the IRS for covered securities.

Fidelity should have trade confirmations that provide the total cost for the lot.

ok, so lets assume that they do. How does that helps me? I can place the total transaction and that will probably set the stock price and will probably be more accurate ... but then for sure there is not other way than a manual process of entering those to historical values. right?

Edit: btw: Just looked at their online transactions ... they don't have anything about the totals. They just have stock numbers were added. All other costs are probably covered by employer. So the best proxy is the closing price. Might not be the most accurate but for tax planning, I think it will be ok. the taxes will eventually be based on what Fidelity will report. -

I think I might need to do the manual entering, other than the fact its not the most accurate (the stock they gave me might be based on mid day trade value) - is there anything wrong in entering this data?

Tom Young

I agree with splasher, the total cost of the lot along with number of shares is what gets reported to the IRS for covered securities.

Fidelity should have trade confirmations that provide the total cost for the lot.

The most accurate per share information is the per share "fair market value" used by the employer to determine the compensation income to include on your W-2:

(# of shares received) x per share fair market value on date of issuance = Cost of the lot.

I'd think you'd have been receiving statements with each delivery, from your employer, explaining all this. But if you don't have anything in hand then the only way to get those lots' basis "close enough" is to look up the closing stock price, or maybe the average of the high and low for that day, or something else that you feel you could defend to the IRS. (There's no "cookbook" formula that the IRS publishes for this.)

You can always ask Fidelity if they have the information, and I'd think they would, at least for years before 2004(?) (After 2004(?) the IRS is only required to report your "out of pocket" cost which for you is $0.)

mshiggins

I agree with splasher, the total cost of the lot along with number of shares is what gets reported to the IRS for covered securities.

Fidelity should have trade confirmations that provide the total cost for the lot.

Did you look at the trade confirmations?

Beijing Mac

just bite the bullet and start adding the share price, you've spent so much time looking for other solutions you could be done by now. you are talking about a transaction 2 times a year.

r-e-l

its six per quarter times 20 years ... thanks for all your help in managing my time.

q_lurker

its six per quarter times 20 years ... thanks for all your help in managing my time.

Look -- folks are trying to help you. Your only choice to get to where you want to be is to edit each Add Shares transaction with whatever price you deem appropriate and defensible. That may or may not be the closing price of the security on a specific date.

How you went from "Every six month (Feb and Aug) ..." to "six per quarter" is a step I missed along the way.

mshiggins

its six per quarter times 20 years ... thanks for all your help in managing my time.

6x4x20 is 480. Not fun, but very do-able.

r-e-l

its six per quarter times 20 years ... thanks for all your help in managing my time.

yes, was hoping there is a feature that I wasn't aware of. I was hoping the downloading of stock price history can be used to "fill missing values".

seems there isn't short cuts and it will need to be manual. I had to check before doing all this one by one.

thanks for the input.