Company Split-off

Henry Theloosen

Merck is splitting off it's wholly owned subsidiary Organon. I received 1 Organon share for every 100 Merck shares. I purchased my Merck shares in 2012. This is a "tax-free" transaction. But how do I handle this in Quicken? My broker tells me the value of the new stock is $5,348.60. Do I go back to 2012 and reduce the cost of my Merck shares by the same amount? Just change the purchase price by the same amount?
Thanks for your help.

jacobs

@Quicken Francisco The comment you linked discusses this issue in Quicken Windows. But this question is about Quicken Mac.

@Henry Theloosen And the problem is that Quicken Mac does not have a transaction/tool/wizard to automatically handle corporate divestitures/spin offs. You may want to visit this Idea post for just such a feature -- and add your vote for it in the yellow box under the first post. If you go down a bit in the thread, a fellow user included his detailed process for handling such a transaction via a temporary account. If you just have one purchase of shares of Merck, it's pretty straightforward; if you have many purchases (including reinvested dividends) over the years, then there can be a bit more adjusting to do.

His approach isn't the only way to do it, and how much work you do depends on how precisely you want your data in Quicken. For instance, are the acquisition dates important to track in Quicken; if you don't sell anything for a year or more, they'll be long-term capital gains whether the shares were acquired today or in 2012; do you care if Quicken shows the correct dates? Will you use Quicken's tax report for your taxes, or the data from your broker's tax forms? Do you want the historical graph in your portfolio to remain exactly accurate, or is that not crucial to you? Some Quicken users wouldn't do anything less than getting every detail mapped out correctly, while others just want to have an up-to-date view of their holdings today and going forward; it all depends how you use Quicken and want to use its data.

Quicken Francisco

Hello @Henry theloosen

Thank you for reaching out to the Community regarding your issue, although I am sorry you have not received a response yet. I was taking a look to see if we're able to find something that might be a similar situation and did find this post from a while back although a bit different from 

(removed - Wrong OS)

I would recommend taking a look to see if the information may be applicable to your current situation. If you have any questions please let us know.

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

jacobs

@Quicken Francisco The comment you linked discusses this issue in Quicken Windows. But this question is about Quicken Mac.

@Henry Theloosen And the problem is that Quicken Mac does not have a transaction/tool/wizard to automatically handle corporate divestitures/spin offs. You may want to visit this Idea post for just such a feature -- and add your vote for it in the yellow box under the first post. If you go down a bit in the thread, a fellow user included his detailed process for handling such a transaction via a temporary account. If you just have one purchase of shares of Merck, it's pretty straightforward; if you have many purchases (including reinvested dividends) over the years, then there can be a bit more adjusting to do.

His approach isn't the only way to do it, and how much work you do depends on how precisely you want your data in Quicken. For instance, are the acquisition dates important to track in Quicken; if you don't sell anything for a year or more, they'll be long-term capital gains whether the shares were acquired today or in 2012; do you care if Quicken shows the correct dates? Will you use Quicken's tax report for your taxes, or the data from your broker's tax forms? Do you want the historical graph in your portfolio to remain exactly accurate, or is that not crucial to you? Some Quicken users wouldn't do anything less than getting every detail mapped out correctly, while others just want to have an up-to-date view of their holdings today and going forward; it all depends how you use Quicken and want to use its data.

Henry Theloosen

@jacobs Thanks for your reply. Since I get 1099's from my brokerage firm I use those for my tax returns, but I like Quicken to be up to date. Since the split/de-acquisition happened I was getting "phantom" transaction downloaded from MS. Which I did not understand and I thought it was a Quicken issue. After contacting MS they explained what happened and I went back to 2012 to make the necessary changes myself in the cost of acquisition.
Thanks for your help.

splasher

@Henry Theloosen

You need to recheck your numbers, the spin-off was for .1 shares of Organon for each share of Merck or 1 Organon for each 10 Merck (not 100).

Personally, I had 195 Merck and got 19 Organon and cash for .5 shares.

Henry Theloosen

YES! Error on my part in my message. Got it right in my Quicken account.

vikingsail

Merck 8937 now available https://www.merck.com/investor-relations/organon-resources/