My Vanguard RMD transactions are wrong.

Marlee

My Vanguard balances are wrong. How can I correct that. I spend the whole day trying with no success

jrich75

In what way are your balances wrong.  The RMD is simply an annual or monthly withdrawal of funds with the amount determined from age and the account balance at the end of the previous year.  So, where are you having trouble?
I simply sell shares in the dollar amount required and transfer the cash to a non-retirement savings account.

Marlee

Quicken does not import the correct balances from VANGURARD. two of my Vanguard accounts are off by a few thousand dollars. Where do I go to correct that? I need to match Vanguard in order to know how much money I have.

jrich75

You need to determine what is actually incorrect.  If you look at your account holdings (set to the last statement date) you should be able to compare number (Quantity) of shares and market (Cash) value of each security to what is shown on the statement for that date.  This should get you started on correcting the account(s).  My Vanguard account also includes a settlement fund which is what they call a cash amount that is not invested in a specific security.  For me it is actually a Money Market fund and is shown as a seperate element on the statement (not included in the Funds summary).  If you can provide some specific examples of the discrepancies, someone may be able help.

jrich75

One other point about RMDs from traditonal IRAs.  You need to determine how much tax (federal & state) is being withheld by the brokerage.  The withholding reduces the dollar amount you actually receive.  That portion of the RMD should shown as a separate item on the statement and reported on the 1099 at the end of the year.

Ps56k2

FYI -

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7072150/faq-best-way-to-handle-distributions-from-ira-also-rmd#latest

In the first receiving Joint Investment Account,
you may need to have two transactions -
one as receiving the Gross distribution,
and the second as paying the withheld taxes (two if state and federal withheld). 

Marlee

do I need to delete the transactions that Quicken put in incorrectly. Then manually enter the transactions. I was trying to avoid that. yes Vanguard takes the money out of my IRA and sends the taxes to the Federal Government. Then the remainder is used to buy funds in seven other funds. There has to be an easier way.

jrich75

In what way are the Quicken transactions incorrect?  Are you downloading them from Vanguard?  Are you entering them automatically or do you review them and enter manually?  Do you use reminders for any of the actions?  Is the problem with the amount of the IRA account balance and/or with the other funds?  Without some sense of where the problem occurs, it's hard to provide useful responses.

One other question:  If you are using the after tax RMD amount to make purchases in seven investment funds, how is the distribution between the various fund purchases determined?  Do you specifiy amounts for each fund or does Vanguard determine the individual amounts to purchase.

NotACPA

"do I need to delete the transactions that Quicken put in incorrectly. "

Quicken doesn't input transactions unless:

1. They were downloaded from Vanguard (in which case HOW can they be incorrect?), OR
2. You manually input them, OR
3. You memorized a prior transaction and re-used it without checking it's accuracy for THIS transaction.

Bob_L

If you set up your RMD deposit as suggested in the link above (gross amount as a deposit transferred from your IRA account along with an expense transaction for the withheld taxes), then you will need to delete the transaction that Vanguard downloads for the tax withholding.  That is accept the downloaded transaction for the sale of the gross amount but delete the one for taxes taken out.  The accepted gross amount will add to your cash balance in quicken and then be taken out by the gross transfer that you probably set up ahead of time as  a reminder.

Chris_QPW

I'm not sure what all the debate is about here.  Of course Vanguard is sending the "wrong transaction".  And of course even though everyone would love for all of this to be automatic and not require manual entry that isn't going to be the case.

Quicken will not allow recording taxes in an IRA account.  It has to be done in a taxable account.
Vanguard doesn't have access to that "taxable account".  It only knows about the IRA account.  So they send the tax transaction to it.

It is up the user to make the needed corrections.  @Bob_L has given the corrections that need to be made.

Ps56k2

comment self deleted

Bob_L

Update/Clarification:  Since my Vanguard accounts have now been "upgraded" to the new brokerage accounts, I see several additional downloads labeled as CASH TRANSACTIONS and Journal entries that show up when I deposit my RMD to another Vanguard brokerage account. 

Bottom Line is that if you have set up an auto entry deposit reminder for your RMD as discussed above, you need to delete all the Vanguard downloaded transactions EXCEPT the BUY in the deposit account and the SELL in the IRA account.