Why are there not Taxable & Non-Taxable Categories for Investments?

William Day

We are all aware that there are Taxable & Non-Taxable Investments. But there are no Non-Taxable Categories for Dividends, Realized Gain/Loss, Reinvest Long-term Capital Gain or Reinvest Short-term Capital Gain. Why? Certainly the Accounts that throw-off these monies are tagged as Taxable or Non-Taxable. Why can't Quicken for Mac handle this?

NotACPA

It's NOT  the Dividends, etc that are taxable or non-taxable ... it the ACCOUNTS that the securities are in (such as IRA accounts or 401k account) that are taxable or non-taxable AND the securities themselves (such as Corp Bonds  vs. Muni Bonds).

SO,  anything in an IRA account is non-taxable (until withdrawn from the IRA), but the same security in a Taxable account will have tax attributes according to the security.

If you set up the accounts and securities properly, your issue goes away.

William Day

My Accounts are setup as either Taxable or Non-Taxable yet all of the monies, etc. they 'throw-off' are posted to (1) Dividend Income, (2) Realized Gain/Loss, (3) Reinvest Long-term Capital Gain and (4) Reinvest Short-term Capital Gain. There are no Non-Taxable (NT) Category equivalencies to which these Non-Taxable Accounts may post the monies, etc. that they 'throw-off'. Perhaps this is a issue that needs to be addressed in the Mac version of Quicken?

William Day

PS - I noticed that you are a Windows user. Perhaps the Windows version of Quicken handles this issue properly; the Mac version does not appear to recognize the Non-Taxable postings.

NotACPA

"There are no Non-Taxable (NT) Category equivalencies to which these Non-Taxable Accounts may post the monies,"

NOT NECESSARY!  In a non-taxable account, ALL Div/etc transactions will AUTOMATICALLY be treated as being, themselves, non-taxable.

Where are you seeing something different?

William Day

For example, when I look at the Category Summary Dividend Income (those dividends from both Taxable accounts and those from Non-Taxable accounts) are recorded in the single category Dividend Income. Where I to export that category to my tax program the non-taxable dividends would be exported to the tax program thereby overstating my dividends by the non-taxable dividend amount leading to me paying more in taxes. There is a need for a Dividend Income (NT) category. This may not be an issue with Quicken Windows, but it certainly is an issue with Quicken Mac.

J_Mike

William Day said:

Why can't Quicken for Mac handle this?

In my experience. QMac (and QWin) handle this quite well from a tax reporting standpoint.
As you point out, Accounts are designated as either Taxable or Non-Taxable (or Tax-deferred). The tax reports include only taxable accounts - the non-taxable accounts are excluded. Thus all activity within a non-taxable account is excluded from tax considerations. Duplicating all of  the categories would be redundant.

The only need for 'Tax Free" categories is for holdings such as muni bond funds held in a taxable account - where the income is tax free. This is covered in QMac with the existing tax-free interest and dividend categories.