R18.14 seems to have broken gain computation.

jimpierce36

My Quicken just recently updated to R18.14 from R17.6. For all my securities I use average cost basis. In all previous versions when I sold a stock I would be asked whether to use average cost or select lots. That was somewhat annoying but I would select average cost and Quicken would select lots that resulted in a fair estimate of realized LONG TERM gain in the Tax Planner. With version R18.14 I am no longer asked which lots, which is great. HOWEVER, Quicken now sells off the most recent lots resulting in SHORT TERM gains for Tax Planner. This needs to be fixed.

Tom Young

"For all my securities I use average cost basis."

You should know that "average cost" is only allowed for mutual funds.  It can't be used for stocks.  I'm referring to IRS rules here obviously, not Quicken's rules.

jimpierce36

I misspoke. I'm talking about mutual funds.

q_lurker

jimpierce36 said:

... but I would select average cost and Quicken would select lots that resulted in a fair estimate of realized LONG TERM gain in the Tax Planner. ...

I don't know what they broke, but apparently something broke. 

BUT, I think your understanding from before is inaccurate.  When you selected Use Average Cost, Quicken would have (I believe) sold the first shares bought but computed the basis of those shares as an average of all shares bought.  There was no lot selection involved on Quicken's part.

jimpierce36

q_lurker: You are right about selecting oldest lots. I'm still running the previous version of Quicken (R17.6) on another computer that I am preventing from updating while I sort this out. So for the same sale it shows (in Tax Planner) a single lot with a buy date of the oldest lot. In R18.14 Tax Planner is showing , for the same sale, the 4 most recent purchases (reinvested divs) which results in the gain being classified as SHORT TERM. The actual gain computed is based on average cost. So you have pointed right at the problem. They are now using the dates and shares of the newest lots rather than the oldest.

BTW - I'm new to this group and I'm not sure if superusers work for Quicken or are just super users. How does this problem get flagged at Quicken as an issue?

q_lurker

jimpierce36 said:

BTW - I'm new to this group and I'm not sure if superusers work for Quicken or are just super users. How does this problem get flagged at Quicken as an issue?

Superusers are just users who have been around a while and have offered usually accurate info on these official Quicken forums.  We are not employees of Quicken, Inc. 

I'll do what I can to flag it.  This is a two-day old forum recently moved from a prior site, so some of the methodologies are still foggy.

Jim_Harman

SuperUsers are just experienced users; we do not work for Quicken. Posting here will get the issue some exposure, but there is no direct link here for reporting issues.

Your best bet would probably be to contact Quicken support directly.

jimpierce36

q_lurker said:

I'll do what I can to flag it.  This is a two-day old forum recently moved from a prior site, so some of the methodologies are still foggy.

Thanks. I was actually on the phone with a rep (after a 20 minute wait) and the connection dropped. Maybe I'll try a chat session.

markus1957

@jimpierce36 - You can see the same issue in a Cap Gains report, but when I look at the lots remaining in the Investing Tab, it seems they are being depleted oldest first. If this is very recent, it may be too soon to say this is only a report/tax planning issue and that actual lot tracking is not being impacted. I'm running a beta version that should be close to the R18 release.

Do you have any stocks in your file that have a recent Sell transaction? I'm curious if you look at the sort of lots between your 2 versions if you notice they are sorted different. Today, when I accepted a Sell and was prompted for the lot I noticed the lot listing window was sorted in descending date order; I seem to remember that it had been sorted in ascending date order.

I didn't think anything of it at the time as it selected the right lots when I clicked First In strategy. Now that you bring up the issue with average cost funds, I wonder if the date order for lots was changed, if that somehow may have impacted a simplistic query code that assumed an ascending date order?

I have a money market fund tracked via average cost and I can also see what you describe in a Capital Gains Report, but when I look at the actual lots remaining for the fund in the Investing Tab, it looks like the lots are being depleted oldest first.  If they were being depleted as the Cap Gains report suggests, I should not see the most recent reinvest purchases.  Very strange! I'm confused, but you are on to something.

jimpierce36

markus1957 said:

I have a money market fund tracked via average cost and I can also see what you describe in a Capital Gains Report, but when I look at the actual lots remaining for the fund in the Investing Tab, it looks like the lots are being depleted oldest first.  If they were being depleted as the Cap Gains report suggests, I should not see the most recent reinvest purchases.  Very strange! I'm confused, but you are on to something.

Thanks for this added insight. In version R17.6 the lots remaining are listed from oldest to newest. In R18.14 they are listed from newest to oldest.  If I look at the Security Detail View the lots are listed from oldest to newest in both versions.

A6mD8d

Thank God I ran off a Capital Gains 2018 report before the upgrade! I have the same problem and it had royally messed up the gains/losses reporting-totally useless at the moment! I am not sure if my tax lots will be fixed when they fix this bug or if I will have to restore an older backup afterwards (tried to restore from a backup I knew had correct reporting and it still was messed up so definitely the upgrade is the problem!).

jimpierce36

A6mD8d said:

Thank God I ran off a Capital Gains 2018 report before the upgrade! I have the same problem and it had royally messed up the gains/losses reporting-totally useless at the moment! I am not sure if my tax lots will be fixed when they fix this bug or if I will have to restore an older backup afterwards (tried to restore from a backup I knew had correct reporting and it still was messed up so definitely the upgrade is the problem!).

This particular problem seems to be in the way gains are figured and not in the way lots are tracked. I have an un updated version on a laptop. I made a copy of the QDF file for the laptop and it computes correct gains and short/long classification. So tax planner (and gains reports) in the two different versions, operating on the same data base, give different results.  

A6mD8d

It seems all the investment reporting is now messed up including the transaction history in the security detail view. The history does not even match what is in the register inasmuch as the order of transactions does not match chronologically. The capital gains reports inflate the cost basis. This is in addition to the lots order in "Select Lots" being backwards-newest lots at the top.

markus1957

A very recent partial sale of a holding tracked on a lot basis seems to confirm this issue is limited to mutual funds using the average cost basis option. The Capital Gains report is showing the correct lots for the cost basis of the partial sale.

Adding- based on @A6mD8d comment below, I'll note in this example I intentionally selected the "First Shares In" strategy in the lots window. Often I'll just skip that window and let Quicken default to first in after clicking lot basis. That may not be the case now especially since the sort order in the window is reversed; the automatic selection may not be working correctly anymore for lot basis holdings.

A6mD8d

I am seeing the problem with non-mutual fund holdings. I will be contacting Premium Support soon to get help.

markus1957

A6mD8d said:

I am seeing the problem with non-mutual fund holdings. I will be contacting Premium Support soon to get help.

Please report back. I'm curious if Support is even aware of the problem. You might think that breaking Cap Gains reporting at the start of tax season would elicit some acknowledgement from Quicken that they recognize the issue and are working on a fix.

The timing is unfortunate in that currently, Quicken's attention seems to be focused on their new Support website rather than actually providing support to users.

jimpierce36

markus1957 said:

A6mD8d said:

I am seeing the problem with non-mutual fund holdings. I will be contacting Premium Support soon to get help.

Please report back. I'm curious if Support is even aware of the problem. You might think that breaking Cap Gains reporting at the start of tax season would elicit some acknowledgement from Quicken that they recognize the issue and are working on a fix.

The timing is unfortunate in that currently, Quicken's attention seems to be focused on their new Support website rather than actually providing support to users.

I initiated this thread. I did a chat session providing all the information in my original post. The agent reported that he had submitted a problem report. I also submitted the problem via the Quicken Help->Report a Problem … Everyone should do that so that they see more than one person reporting the problem.

markus1957

After generating a test file and getting feedback that Quicken did make a "sorting" change in R18-

The problem must be in the "sort" change when Quicken is left to automatically select holdings on which to base the gain.  If in a Sell transaction, the user clicks the Specify Lots button and manually enters shares or clicks First In strategy, it calculates gain correctly. If you don't force the selection, the reports and tax planner queries (probably the same) calculate the gain on the most recent lots purchased (probably selected based on top of the sort table rather than by date).  If you "Reset Selection" in lots window, the Sell gain returns to the error condition.  Since average cost funds have no means to manually select lots, they cannot be forced to choose First In lots.

Note that the Investing tab view shows that the lots table is actually depleting oldest lots first (12/18/2015 Buys were for 100 shares) which shows a disconnect between the report/planner query result and whatever query generates the Investing tab view.

Above- ACME Holdings was forced to use Lot Selection "First In" strategy by clicking button. Below after Reset Selection button used to clear lots and then acknowledging Use First In window pop-up, ACME gain returns to error condition.

jimpierce36

markus1957 said:

A6mD8d said:

I am seeing the problem with non-mutual fund holdings. I will be contacting Premium Support soon to get help.

Please report back. I'm curious if Support is even aware of the problem. You might think that breaking Cap Gains reporting at the start of tax season would elicit some acknowledgement from Quicken that they recognize the issue and are working on a fix.

The timing is unfortunate in that currently, Quicken's attention seems to be focused on their new Support website rather than actually providing support to users.

I initiated this thread. I did a chat session providing all the information in my original post. The agent reported that he had submitted a problem report. I also submitted the problem via the Quicken Help->Report a Problem … link. Everyone should do that last step so that they see more than one person reporting the problem.

markus1957

@jimpierce36 - Heard you the first time. Used the bat phone; they're working on a fix.

But thanks for being the first one to identify this; it was not an easy one to pick up.

markus1957

R18.15 now in staged release corrects the error.