How Do I Get Withdrawals From A Traditional IRA To Show Up In An Income/Expense Report?

saberman

I have an Income/Expense report.  I have included a Traditional IRA account.  Withdrawals are considered income.  How do I get withdrawals to show up in the Income section?

Jim_Harman

One way to handle this would be to exclude the IRA account from the report then on the report's Advanced customization tab, set Transfers to "Exclude Internal".

Tom Young

"Withdrawals are considered income."

Well, "Yes" and "No."

Under traditional accounting rules (GAAP) a transfer out from an IRA to an after-tax checking account isn't income, it's a transfer of money from one pocket to a different pocket, no different than transferring money from your savings account to your checking account.  Accordingly, transfers from IRAs shouldn't show up as a form of Income.

But Statutory accounting rules (income tax) do deem that transfer to be taxable income.

If you're preparing an Income and Expense report under GAAP then you don't include that transfer in that report.  If you have things set up properly in your Quicken file that transfer will be considered income on the Tax Reports.  That certainly is an acceptable and sensible approach to how to account for things in this situation. 

When you try to combine GAAP accounting with Statutory accounting in one report there's almost inevitably a miss-statement that happens.

@Jim_Harman 's recommendation is a commonly-used method of having the transfer show up as a form of "income" in the income section of a Spending report.  It will show up as a line titled "FROM [Name of IRA Account]" down at the bottom of the income section.  But by eliminating the IRA under the "Accounts" tab such that it's no longer "feeding" information to the report, any income (or loss) within the IRA Account won't be included in the report.  And, if you do include the IRA Account in the report than you're doing some amount of "double counting" of income - all the income in the IRA is included in the report plus the transfer is also showing up as income. 

You're absolutely free to take any approach to this situation that you want; they are your financial statements and you get to decide how you want things presented.  I'm just pointing out that combining GAAP and Statutory accounting in one report almost inevitably results in a "fruit salad" statement that probably won't be entirely accurate from either point of view.

saberman

You are correct that it would be a mix of items.  I think I will try using a cash flow report in addition to the income expense report and see if that provides the information I need (or think I need).