Capital gains distributions in taxable brokerage account

johnhsmitty

Can anyone point me to how to have the current version of Quicken Deluxe give capital gains distributions transactions the proper tax treatment as taxable income in a account marked taxable? Or does this function require Quicken Premier to work properly?
It does appear that the categories: _LT CapGnDst, _MT CapGnDst, and _ST CapGnDst are not assigned a Tax line item and can not be changed. I wonder why they aren't assigned a tax category.

Rocket J Squirrel

Good news! It appears that it is once again possible to edit the "_" investment categories in QWin R30.14.

Hold down CTRL and SHIFT and right-click the category. You should see Edit in the resulting menu. Then you can go to the Tax Reporting tab of the resulting dialog and correct the tax line item.

Frankx

HI @johnhnmitty,

Are you sure that your "_LT CapGnDst, _MT CapGnDst, and _ST CapGnDst are not assigned a Tax line item"?  They should be assigned to "Schedule D" in the "tax Line Item" column.

Frankx

[edited for a minor typo]

johnhsmitty

Yes I am sure. See attached. I created a new file and they are assigned a tax item. It must be my incredibly old datafile. It is on the order of 15 years old. Is there any patch up to update this? Can support actually fix the category?

Frankx

I see.  Well, unfortunately I think you may have a corrupted Quicken data file. I believe that the only way to fix missing Tax Line Items is to restore a backup file that was created prior to the date the Tax Line Items went missing.

I guess that you could first try troubleshooting your data file per the instructions located here.  You could also contact Quicken Support to see if they have any ideas - here's that LINK .  However based on what I know, you will likely need to either live with the issue or restore a backup.

Sorry the news isn't good, but I wish you good luck with this issue.

Frankx

Ps56k2

Weird..... and here is my current QW2020 version -
and it is missing - Realized Gain - ??

Frankx

Hi @ps56k,

Actually I think that you are okay because you have the "checkmark inside the red circle" and are only missing the description.

Frankx

Rocket J Squirrel

@johnhsmitty your file is damaged. Recently Quicken has made it impossible to fix these damaged investment categories. I wish I could remember how long this has been the case. You could try reverting to a year-old version, say, and see whether you could edit the categories, then restore your current version.

@ps56k your file looks normal. _RlzdGain doesn't have a tax line item.

q_lurker

johnhsmitty said:

Can anyone point me to how to have the current version of Quicken Deluxe give capital gains distributions transactions the proper tax treatment as taxable income in a account marked taxable? Or does this function require Quicken Premier to work properly?
It does appear that the categories: _LT CapGnDst, _MT CapGnDst, and _ST CapGnDst are not assigned a Tax line item and can not be changed. I wonder why they aren't assigned a tax category.

Quicken Premier is not required, and upgrading to that is unlikely to fix the underlying issue.

You might review this discussion
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7880936/is-there-a-way-to-correct-the-tax-treament-of-the-divinc-category#latest
and try some of the steps suggested there, though I don't see a definite resolution there.  

I do think sometime somewhat recently Quicken implemented a better lockdown on changes to those internal categories.  Before you could do 'some' editing, though I am not sure about tax line assignments.  

FWIW, I have now found five anomalies in my file - four lacking descriptions, one lacking the tax line, but in my case the tax line omission is insignificant.  Your case involving Cap gain distributions is more significant.   

MarkD

In my case _LT CapGnDst and _RlzdGain  have Tax line assignments inverted. Gives bad Tax Planner results

Rocket J Squirrel

Good news! It appears that it is once again possible to edit the "_" investment categories in QWin R30.14.

Hold down CTRL and SHIFT and right-click the category. You should see Edit in the resulting menu. Then you can go to the Tax Reporting tab of the resulting dialog and correct the tax line item.

brandongblack

> @Rocket J Squirrel said:
> Good news! It appears that it is once again possible to edit the "_" investment categories in QWin R30.14.
> Hold down CTRL and SHIFT and right-click the category. You should see Edit in the resulting menu. Then you can go to the Tax Reporting tab of the resulting dialog and correct the tax line item.

Thanks! That worked! Fixed the short term capital gain category to report as a short term capital gain instead of dividend

Rocket J Squirrel

brandongblack said:

Fixed the short term capital gain category to report as a short term capital gain instead of dividend

Make sure you know what you're doing before you start changing things.

Capital gain distributions from mutual funds are entered on Schedule B as dividends. This is different from actual gains you realized by selling shares, which are entered  on Schedule D.

Check your last year's 1099-DIV, line 2a, and you'll see the distributions reported there. Actual realized gains are reported on 1099-B.

q_lurker

Rocket J Squirrel said:

brandongblack said:

Fixed the short term capital gain category to report as a short term capital gain instead of dividend

Make sure you know what you're doing before you start changing things.

Capital gain distributions from mutual funds are entered on Schedule B as dividends. This is different from actual gains you realized by selling shares, which are entered  on Schedule D.

Check your last year's 1099-DIV, line 2a, and you'll see the distributions reported there. Actual realized gains are reported on 1099-B.

To edit RJS's comment : Short term capital gain distributions from mutual funds are entered on Schedule B as dividends. 

Long term capital gain distributions are treated through Schedule D 

@MarkD
FWIW: In my long-term 30 year old file, the _RlzdCain category is checked as tax-related, but has no tax line associated with it.  That is reasonable and correct IMO, as the allocation of the realized gain may be either short term or long term and in some cases both.  In preparing Cap gains reports, Quicken makes the correct differentiation between the two even though the _RlzdGain category has no tax line.  

Rocket J Squirrel

q_lurker said:

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Capital gain distributions from mutual funds are entered on Schedule B as dividends. This is different from actual gains you realized by selling shares, which are entered  on Schedule D.

Check your last year's 1099-DIV, line 2a, and you'll see the distributions reported there. Actual realized gains are reported on 1099-B.

To edit RJS's comment : Short term capital gain distributions from mutual funds are entered on Schedule B as dividends. 

Long term capital gain distributions are treated through Schedule D

@q_lurker is correct. I am starting to forget what goes where now that my taxes are mostly automated with TurboTax importing from my brokerages.

I find Form 1099-DIV a little confusing because it reports more than just dividends. Line 1a reports the total of all ordinary taxable dividends plus short-term capital gain distributions with no distinction between the two on the form. Line 2a reports the total of long-term capital gain distributions. But nowhere on the form does it show the words "short-term" or "long-term". Good thing TurboTax is better at this than I am.