IRA distribution

petecap

I took my IRA distribution as a transfer of stock shares from my IRA to my personal account. That part was no problem.

How do I get the distribution to be included in my income report?

Frankx

Hi @petecap,

It may sound confusing, but a distribution from an IRA account is not actually income for accounting purposes. It is simply a distribution (or really a transfer of funds) from one account to another.

That being said - the distribution IS income for federal tax purposes (and perhaps also for state income tax purposes depending on the state of residence). The distribution is actually previously earned income that was deferred for only for tax purposes.

Frankx

Chris_QPW

One way to look at is if you do a distribution/transfer your net worth doesn't change, and as such there isn't any income. On the other hand, you can have expenses related to a distribution/transfer, which is the case of paying federal and possibly state taxes. These expenses actually reduce your net worth.

To record the taxes, you have to do that in a split of the transfer, in a taxable account.

Jim_Harman

One way to accomplish this would be to record it as a Sell in the IRA, transfer the cash, and then buy the same securities for the same amount on the same day in the receiving account. This may affect some of Quicken's performance measures, but it will not affect the Average Annual Return in the Portfolio views and Investment Performance Report if you include both the IRA and the receiving account in the view or report.

As others have said, strictly speaking, transfers between accounts are not income or expenses, but if you want to treat transfers from an account as income or expenses for reporting purposes, you can customize the report so that it includes the "spending" accounts but does not include the other account(s). Then if the spending account receives a transfer, the sending account will be listed in the Income section of the report as FROM <account-name>.

If you are using the Banking > Cash flow report for a transfer you are treating as income, you should include the receiving account but not the sending account, and on the Advanced tab next to Transfers, select "Exclude internal". The terminology is confusing, but "Exclude Internal" tells the report to ignore transfers between accounts that are selected for the report (payments from your checking account to a credit card account for example) but to include transfers between the selected accounts and other accounts.

Other reports have different default settings, but they work the same way: Include the "spending" accounts but not the other account(s), and on the Advanced tab set Transfers to "Exclude internal". If the report has an Organization setting on the Advanced tab, set it to “Cash Flow Basis”.

If you want to exclude specific transfer accounts from the report, you can scroll to the bottom of the Categories tab, where you will see all of your accounts listed. Un-check those you want to exclude.

You can control which transfers are included in your Budget reports by clicking on Manage Budget Categories on the Budget page and making selections in the Transfers In and Transfers Out sections.