Ira Withdrawal

Monte Kern

Quicken Deluxe Subscription Windows 11-- both up to date
I am trying to enter my IRA withdrawal for last year and having a problem, maybe of my own creation.
I have my investment accounts tracking set to Simple-Positions Only. Does that mean I will be unable to enter the IRA withdrawal each year? If so, any work around? The withdrawal goes from an IRA to another post tax investment account, if that matters, and both are set to tracking - simple.
Thanks
Monte

Chris_QPW

To do the withdraw you need to enter it as a transfer, which you can't do if both sides of the transaction are in accounts in simple mode.  You will have to switch one of the to complete, at least long enough to enter the transfer.

Monte Kern

Chris
Thanks for the quick response to this one and a couple others in the past. If I may, a couple of questions:
If I change one/both/which to tracking=complete, enter the transfer and then change back to simple (I assume That can be done?), will the balances be accurate after I update again (tracking set back to simple)?
If this will work, which account should I use to enter the transaction?
I don't want to hose up the accounts, but would really like to be able to track this once a year IRA withdrawal.
Thoughts? Cautions?
Thanks
Monte

Chris_QPW

I tried to test this, but I'm running into a fundamental problem, I didn't make such a withdraw.

As such, Quicken in simple investing mode is removing the transfer to make the balances come out correctly for what it knows about the positions and cash that I have in the two accounts.

So, I'm not sure anymore if that is even possible.

The two possibilities are that it might leave the transfer alone if the positions/cash it finds lines up with what it is getting from the financial institution, or it might remove it no matter what.

For the first one to have a chance at being right you would have to be either removing an existing transaction, for instance if the simple investing mode update has already put in something like Misc Income transaction.

Chris_QPW

BTW for what it is worth they have implemented Simple investment mode in a much more complicated way than I would have thought.  I would have thought they would just put in transactions to adjust the shares/cash balance.  But they are actually removing transactions to get the results they want.

Monte Kern

Chris
Thanks again for all your valuable input and knowledge sharing.
I kinda thought what you said, but thought I might be missing something. According to what I can determine, if I am using simple, Q does not dl transactions, just positions, so no way to enter a trans.
I like to see the income and expenses compared on the dashboard, but without the IRA distribution its way off. I stopped using complete tracking as it is a pain in the backside to try and reconcile all the piddly cash/money market/interest/dividends/reinvestments in the investment accounts after each update. And Quicken web trashed a bunch of my transaction allocations back to 2011 in 2021, so all my prior year stuff is trash.. Somehow it all seems less important now. I even looked at some different software, but it was way too much trouble to switch at this point.
I've decided it's not worth it to mess with this.
Thanks again.
Monte

Chris_QPW

Even though Simple investment mode hides the register, it is still there, and it is still being used by Quicken. What changes is what transactions are entered (and it seems removed).

If you are in Complete mode and you buy a 100 shares of XXX your will get that transaction downloaded into your register.  If you are in Simple investing mode Quicken will notice that the number of shares for XXX is now 900 when it was before 800 and it will put in an Add Shares transaction. 

I have played with it and for when the cash balance is off it will put in MiscInc (for an increase in cash).

So, Simple mode should always bring your account to the right number of shares/cash balance, but it won't do it in a way that tax ramifications are covered, like keeping track of the cost basis.

The only real reason to put in the transfer would be to record the tax ramifications of a withdraw from your IRA.  That would have been possible if they allow that transfer to stay untouched and then just adjusted the shares and cash balance, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Bottom line is that when in Simple mode none the "tax ramifications" can be tracked.  Or at least now without great difficulty.

That shouldn't take away from its primary mission of just showing you the current value of your securities.

Monte Kern

Yeah, I have arrived at those same conclusions. Did you notice the warning, in red I think, when you try to switch an account from simple to complete? It said similar to what you said, but I was led to believe by Quicken warning that the trans were not actually DLed. Quicken is probably trying to keep it simple.
Anyway, thanks again. I'm going to live with no withdrawal trans for now. I don't use Quicken for tax purposes anyway, just budgeting and expense tracking. Would have been nice to see the income vs spending, but waaaay too much trouble.
Have a great evening and thanks again.
Monte

Chris_QPW

Actually, I thought of one thing that might work.  You will have to try it because I can't really test it.
Make the withdraw to another taxable account like a checking account.  And then "get rid of it" by doing a transfer to the brokerage account.  You could even do that in one split transaction.  That might work.

Even if that doesn't work if one really wants to record a transaction against a given category, they can do this.  In any taxable account like a checking account create a split transaction.  The first line should be a "balance adjustment" as in if you are in Checking the category would be [Checking] with a value of a positive number of what you withdrew from the IRA.  Then put in another line with a negative value for the amount of the withdraw from the IRA using a category that has the right tax line to record the IRA tax.

EDIT I believe I got that backwards for the last one.  You would want to start with a negative number for the balance adjustment so that the amount going into the category with tax line on it is positive.

Monte Kern

Chris
I think that might work. I have to think about it a bit. In my case both the IRA and taxable account are investment accounts on tracking=simple. I would have to do the transaction in a different account that had no involvement in the actual withdrawal. Maybe a dummy or closed account? Have to think about it.
Thanks for the extra effort on this one.
Monte

Chris_QPW

Yes, you can do this in a "dummy account" and it can be hidden.  But note since the transaction is going to result in a zero-balance change to that account it really can be any account.  Just remember it needs to be a taxable account like a checking account.

Example:


And the category.


Note that when you the transfer out it is the "gross amount", so that might be the tax line you want instead the one I used above.

Chris_QPW

@Jim_Harman Which one should it be in this case, gross or taxable?

Taxable seems "reasonable", because this is just a recording of the taxable amount, not the gross where you would have the majority deposited in the account, and some tax taken out.

In this case the amount that isn't taxed should have ended up in the taxable brokerage account.

Jim_Harman

I am not an expert on this, but I think if you know the the distribution is taxable, you should record the gross amount and use the 1099:Total IRA Taxable distribution tax line item. The key is entering the transaction as a Deposit in a taxable account, and not as an XIn or an XOut from the IRA account. You should record any taxes withheld in the taxable account.

Monte Kern

Chris
Thanks much for the extra input. I did use a dummy account that I will now keep and reuse each year. This year, tax year 2022, it will be used for 2 ira distributions as my wife is now in the RMD age group also.
It took me several tries to get it right, but I think I've got it now. I had 2 distributions to record, one with tax withheld and one without. The one without was easier, the one with tax withholding took a couple of tries. I am glad I used the dummy account, as I tried several creative ways to do this and it was a simple matter to delete the account after each failed attempt. I did learn a lot about how Q allocates various odd items, like adjustments to an account reconcile (yeah, I tried that too). Then I reread your original idea and realized I missed the part about allocating back into the same account for the balance adjustment. It was all smooth sailing from there. It's only been 60 years since I took accounting and we only had paper and pencil and no calculator. My how things have changed, but the basics are still the same. I just seem to have forgotten a few of those basics. Thanks for helping me remember and apply same.

It is great to have people like you to help us out from time to time.

Have a great evening.
Monte

Monte Kern

Jim

Thanks for your input and help. The tax stuff is pretty straight forward, but trying to get it entered correctly is where I fall down sometimes. You input helped me see how to do this best in Q..
Thanks and have a great evening.
Monte