Is there a way to "hide" a bank deposit from being counted as income?

Will Fiveash

Earlier this year I deposited a large amount of money into my personal bank account only to transfer that amount into an estate account I manage. The thing that bothers me is that this deposit skews the Quicken reports that involve income. Is there a way to hide this deposit and associated transfer from Quicken income reports?

BTW, what I ended up doing is deleting the deposit and transfer from my account and adding the deposit manually into the estate account.

Will Fiveash

> @jacobs said:
> Did you immediately move the money from your bank account to the estate account? And is this estate account an account in your Quicken data file, or is it completely external to your personal Quicken?

I had to wait for the deposit check to clear in my personal account before I transferred it. The estate account is a separate account tracked in Quicken.

>
> If the estate account is among your Quicken accounts, and you made the transfer as soon as you got the money (or within a few days), the simplest thing is to record the deposit to your bank account as being a Transfer to the estate account. This transaction won't show up as income, because it's a transfer.
>

Thanks for that tip. I will try that next time this happens.

> If your estate account is not something you track in your Quicken accounts, you can record the deposit and use of of Quicken Mac's "special" categories: "Transfer" or "Adjustment". Both of these will be skipped in any income/expense report. 

jacobs

Did you immediately move the money from your bank account to the estate account? And is this estate account an account in your Quicken data file, or is it completely external to your personal Quicken?

If the estate account is among your Quicken accounts, you record a transfer transaction to move the money from the bank account to the estate account. This transaction won't show up as income, because it's a transfer. But how to get the money into the bank account? If the deposit of the funds should not be seen as income, you can record the deposit using one of Quicken Mac's "special" categories: "Transfer" or "Adjustment". Both of these will be skipped in any income/expense report. This generic Transfer category -- not a transfer to or from any account -- exists specifically to allow money to be moved to or from accounts not tracked in Quicken, without creating income.

Will Fiveash

> @jacobs said:
> Did you immediately move the money from your bank account to the estate account? And is this estate account an account in your Quicken data file, or is it completely external to your personal Quicken?

I had to wait for the deposit check to clear in my personal account before I transferred it. The estate account is a separate account tracked in Quicken.

>
> If the estate account is among your Quicken accounts, and you made the transfer as soon as you got the money (or within a few days), the simplest thing is to record the deposit to your bank account as being a Transfer to the estate account. This transaction won't show up as income, because it's a transfer.
>

Thanks for that tip. I will try that next time this happens.

> If your estate account is not something you track in your Quicken accounts, you can record the deposit and use of of Quicken Mac's "special" categories: "Transfer" or "Adjustment". Both of these will be skipped in any income/expense report. 

NotACPA

It IS income.  Whether it's taxable income, or not, depends upon the tax line of the category that you assigned to the transaction.

A $100 birthday check from your parents is, likewise, income ... just not taxable.

There's only 4 "grand" categories of transactions in Q:

• Income
• Expense
• Asset
• Liability.

If you don't want it to be income, ... to what other grand category would you assign it?

And Transfers, at least in Q, have to be from another account that's tracked in THIS Q data file.

volvogirl

Is the Estate account in the same Quicken data file as your personal accounts?  Do you made a direct transfer in Quicken?  If you have an estate set up then it needs to be in a separate data file from your personal accounts.   An Estate needs to file its own tax return.   

jacobs

NotACPA said:

It IS income.  Whether it's taxable income, or not, depends upon the tax line of the category that you assigned to the transaction.

@NotACPA No, not necessarily. It depends what the source of the money was. If the money already belonged to the user, but was deposited from a source not represented in Quicken -- such a savings account, savings bonds or other account external to Quicken -- it should not be counted as income. Thus the idea of a deposit which simply appears from out of nowhere and is invisible to Quicken income and tax reports. 

@Will Fiveash I edited my original response above because it was incomplete and misleading. As now noted, the question revolves around the source of the money deposited into your bank account. If it was from somewhere you didn't previously track in Quicken, then my (updated) original reply will achieve the results you need. If it was from some account you already have in Quicken, then it should have been a transfer and shouldn't have generated any income. If it was a gift to you, then as @NotACPA says, it should be recognized as income, using a deposit transaction with a category such as Personal Income:Gift Received.

Will Fiveash

To clarify my issue, I received a large amount of money from a company my father owned. This money was a distribution from the company to pay the company's income tax (the company is an s-corp which means the shareholders are responsible for paying the tax but currently my father's Estate owns all the stock so the Estate is paying that tax). I wanted to deposit the check directly into the estate account via an ATM but I don't have ATM access to that account so I deposited it to my personal account thinking that I would transfer that to the estate account ASAP.

At this point I just deleted the deposit and transfer transactions and manually created a deposit transaction in the estate account. I also want to say thanks to everyone that responded to my question.

NotACPA

jacobs said:

NotACPA said:

It IS income.  Whether it's taxable income, or not, depends upon the tax line of the category that you assigned to the transaction.

@NotACPA No, not necessarily. It depends what the source of the money was. If the money already belonged to the user, but was deposited from a source not represented in Quicken -- such a savings account, savings bonds or other account external to Quicken -- it should not be counted as income. Thus the idea of a deposit which simply appears from out of nowhere and is invisible to Quicken income and tax reports. 

If the source isn't tracked in your Q data file ... then it's STILL income as far as Q is concerned.  It increased your net worth as reflected in Q.

jacobs

NotACPA said:

jacobs said:

NotACPA said:

It IS income.  Whether it's taxable income, or not, depends upon the tax line of the category that you assigned to the transaction.

@NotACPA No, not necessarily. It depends what the source of the money was. If the money already belonged to the user, but was deposited from a source not represented in Quicken -- such a savings account, savings bonds or other account external to Quicken -- it should not be counted as income. Thus the idea of a deposit which simply appears from out of nowhere and is invisible to Quicken income and tax reports. 

If the source isn't tracked in your Q data file ... then it's STILL income as far as Q is concerned.  It increased your net worth as reflected in Q.

I respectfully disagree. If the money is coming from a source that previously belonged to you but was not  previously been tracked in Quicken, then, yes, your Net Worth suddenly increases, but you didn't have income. This is why you can Add Share to an investment, or create a deposit transaction using the category of Transfer or Adjustment to make money appear out of thin air. It's not income; it's just you adding funds you already owned into Quicken.

In any case, since Will has stated he has a satisfactory resolution to the question he was asking, there's no need for us to hash this out further.