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Quicken Automatic tax lot method assignment for tax deferred accounts

ASF1

I realize there are some other posts on this topic, but they really do not address my need.

Why can't you assign an automatic default tax lot method other than LIFO, or FIFO on an account basis? I realize there are some implications of using High Cost or Low Cost methods as it pertains to short and long term holdings. BUT.. Since the settings are by account, accounts that are tax deferred or non-taxable (IRA, 401k, 403b, Roth-IRA) accounts really don't care about short and long term holding periods. For those accounts you should be able to define a default method like high cost to the account. Otherwise you have to go through EVERY SINGLE transaction and select the high cost method on download. If you want your balances to match what the broker says, then this is the only way to do it.

It seems like this would be a relatively simple change and limited to tax deferred accounts.

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Comments

Jim_Harman

Since capital gains are not taxed in tax deferred accounts, why not just use FIFO?

Tom Young

Click on the ellipses ("breadcrumbs") and change your post to an Idea to be voted upon and see if it gets any traction. As @Jim_Harman suggests, there's not much point in using a complicated costing method in a tax-deferred account and given Quicken's propensity to break something else when making changes to the program we might all be better off to leave this one alone.

ASF1

I do it that way because I have had my brokerage accounts a lot longer than Quicken. All of my trades are coded for high cost tax lot method, and the broker has no problem at all dealing with accurately tying orders to appropriate high cost lots. My average daily trade volume is over 150 trades a day, and manually entering this is quite cumbersome. The biggest issue is if I use FIFO, the balances don't match the broker statements. And I would even bring up the issue if Quicken did not offer high cost as an option when you do it manually. But since they do, the logic is there in the program, so why not let you set as default and automate the process.

[Deleted User]

@ASF1 - What is the name of the broker? I can say that this broker is using an unusual method for a tax deferred account. Tax lots and method are a moot point in a tax deferred account, so they usually default to FIFO systematically.

NotACPA

@Damian @ASF1 While tax lots are moot for tax purchases in a retirement account, they're still significant for Performance reporting.

I've battled with Fidelity over this issue for years, as they report my Reinvested Dividends in my taxable account properly, but the same dividends show a $0 basis on the same security in my retirement account.

[Deleted User]

@notacpa - your situation with Fidelity is not right I agree. They should be consistent with how they calculate tax basis and reinvested dividends should be included in tax basis calculation. The only thing I can think of why the difference is that your retirement account and taxable account are on two different systems. Have you asked them how they calculate performance on your retirement account? Sometimes for retirement accounts some FIs have a separate system to calculate performance.