Why impossible to tell gains and losses in retirement accounts

Supermann

such as IRA and 401(k). I know their tax consequences are different from the non-retirement accounts, but it would be great to see such numbers too. Coz believe it or not, I would think the wash sale rules should apply to the retirement accounts as well and should be viewed in conjunction with the non-retirement accounts. Thanks.

Jon

Supermann said:

I would think the wash sale rules should apply to the retirement accounts as well and should be viewed in conjunction with the non-retirement accounts. 

Sort of. If you sell in a taxable account & then buy the same thing in an IRA, it counts as a wash sale and you can't write off the loss in the taxable account. But if you sell in an IRA & then buy the same thing in taxable, it doesn't really matter whether it's a wash sale because you were never going to be able to write off the loss anyway. 

I agree that being able to see gains & losses on individual investments inside retirement accounts is useful, but I don't see why it would be a factor wrt wash sales.

mshiggins

Why can’t you see gains and losses in your retirement accounts? I’ve created capital gains reports that include retirement accounts, which make it quite simple to see gains and losses. Is that no longer possible in subscription versions?

Mark1104

what is your REAL objective?  "taxable" gains and losses" are really irrelevant within a IRA (whether TRAD or Roth).  For a TRAD, taxes are paid at the ordinary tax rates upon distribution (gains and losses don't matter) and for a ROTH, there are normally no tax consequences upon distribution (and if there are, it is a function of your age and how long the ROTH has been open - it has nothing do to with gains / losses on the investments withhin the ROTH)......if you are trying to simply measure "performance"., there is a canned report that can accomodate that.... so, what is your REAL objective? 

q_lurker

@Supermann Should I assume you are referring to realized gains and losses since you raise the wash sale issue?  As @mshiggins points out, you can customize the basic cap gains report to include tax deferred accounts if you choose to. 

Similarly for unrealized gains and losses, any of the portfolio views can also be customized as to showing gain/loss and inclusiveness of accounts. 

By the way, thanks to @Jon for the comment about when an IRA purchase might cause a wash sale situation. Not something I’d thought about. 

Boatnmaniac

The Tax Reports, by default, are set up to capture taxable events.  Other than contributions to and distributions from retirement accounts transactions that occur inside retirement accounts are not taxable events.

As mentioned above, the Cap Gains & Losses report can be customized (upper right Gear icon on the report) to capture that data for retirement accounts.  That can also be done with, I believe, many of the applicable Tax Reports, such as Tax Schedule, Tax Summary, Sch D and Sch B but I'm not sure what the benefit of that would be because the data that would be captured would have have little to do with taxes.

For my retirement accounts I make extensive use of the Investment Income and Investment Performance reports, customized to show just the accounts I'd like to see data for.  You can also customize the Investment Income report to include not only realized gains but also unrealized gains.

Chris_QPW

I know this way old, but if one is looking for if they have a wash sale between a taxable account and a retirement account, then you aren't going to see it on a capital gains report no matter if you include the retirement account or not.

Why?

Definition:

The rule defines a wash sale as one that occurs when an individual sells or trades a security at a loss and, within 30 days before or after this sale, buys the same or a substantially identical stock or security, or acquires a contract or option to do so.

So, the selling of the security will show up on the capitial gains report, but the buy will not. The security lot that goes with the buy will not show up on the capital gains report until you sell it.

To look for wash sells you have to look for matching buys/sells, and the only report I think that gives that information would be the investment transaction report.

Supermann

Sorry for the delay. A lot of things at home. I guess at the end of the day, I just want to be able to tell the gains/losses regardless what account they are in. So that I know the pot is getting larger and larger, not smaller and smaller. Even if for retirement account, you put in 100, you want it to be 200 by the time of distribution, right? So it's important to tell which stock is performing and which is not, so that I could dump the non-performing ones. I have tried the “gear” icon to customize capital gains report. I guess it works, but one just can't select short term vs long term. Once the retirement accounts are selected, a gain/loss report is produced…And they have been hemoraging money….Yikes!

Mark1104

@Superman - then why not just use the “investment performance” report. Sub-total by Security. It tells you the return on your investments over any period of time you choose. I find that a more effective report than ‘gain /. loss’ - because I can pick the time frame over which to review the performance.