How To Change Stock Basis After GE Stock Spinoff

MarkKWilliams

GE just spun off their healthcare unit. I was able to enter the correct basis for the healthcare unit, but can't change the basis for my original GE investment. Suggestions?

Greg_the_Geek

Can someone give the investing world step by step instructions for recording the GE spin off of Heal — Quicken

Tom Young

As you can see if you step over to the post shown by @Greg_the_Geek 's response, getting the spin off to work correctly in all its particulars can be quite a chore. 

Quicken's old "Corporate Securities Spin-off" wizard was pretty straight-forward: it did a Removed action for all the parent company stock, then did a series of Added actions for each lot of the parent company stock and each lot of the child company stock.  The added actions had the correct basis and the correct date acquired for all the lots.  The problem was that the Investment Performance Report didn't return the correct results after a spin off.  Quicken attempted to address this issue by changing the entries the "Corporate Securities Spin-off" wizard made in the Transaction List, but they didn't get it right.

If you have entered the correct basis for your GEHC stock that suggests that you made one or more Added entries to the Transaction List since there was no cash involved beyond the cash in lieu amount.  If the Investment Performance Report isn't a report you use or if the GE/GEHC holdings aren't particularly material to your portfolio, you might wish to simply mimic Quicken's old style of dealing with spin-offs: Do a Removed action for all the GE stock, and then do one or more Added actions to re-establish the GE stock at its new lower basis.  This is pretty easy if you only had a handful of lots of GE.

q_lurker

Added a tip in the cited discussion relevant to this question.