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Capital Gains and Budgets

Carefree

This has been discussed before, but they are closed here. When you download a transaction type, you can't change the Category, and the Budget possible items don't include LTCG or STCG. This is such an oversight because, like many, some of us use these year-end gains in our annual planning on the Revenue side.

There is a workaround that might work, but why? Please, Quicken, add gains to the budgeting tool.

The workaround is to change the downloaded gain to a Payment to an account you set up and label. Don't know what this might do to the gains calculator, which I don't use. [Edited - Readability]

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jacobs

For a moderator: This issue of long-term and short-term capital gains not showing up as available categories to select in a budget have been reported many times in the past, but I don't think there has been a clear answer or path forward. Would you please check to see if there is an open issue for this shortcoming, or if the budget is somehow considered by the developers to be "operating as designed" without the ability to include capital gains income? (The latter would necessitate starting over from scratch to raise this issue to the developers' attention with a new Idea post to request this fix as a future "enhancement", likely a multi-year slog.) Thank you!

For reference, here is the list of Investments categories in Quicken Mac:

Screenshot 2026-10-29 at 12.34.59 PM.png

And here is the much smaller list of Investments categories available to include in a budget:

Screenshot 2026-10-29 at 12.34.37 PM.png

Carefree

Your visual tools make one scratch their head. Surely if some show up in the budget others can too. As I recall, 😂, there are many Baby Boomers that rely on capital gains for their retirement spending. I am one of them now. I never paid attention to this detail, and I think its a big oversight so thanks for pointing it out with the graphics. I have not yet tested the dummy account method I am thinking of. I hope the moderators respond and thank you.

jacobs

Yes, I hopped on this thread you started because while I've been aware of this shortcoming in the past, I (a) thought it had been fixed, and (b) wasn't focused on using the budget because of its own significant shortcomings — which are now finally starting to be addressed in the 9.2 and new 9.3 releases.

I suspect the issue is that the budget categories are all standard categories which carry values summed from transactions, while capital gains require calculations of sale price minus acquisition price for every lot involved in sold shares — so implementing capital gains categories in the budget isn't as simple as just adding them to the list. Nonetheless, capital gains can be a very important part of budget planning, especially for retired people whose income is largely dependent on and comprised of investment income.

Quicken James

Hello @Carefree,

Thank you for bringing this back to us.

I’ve looked into this further, and our product development team is aware of the request and is reviewing the feature. However, it is not currently a high priority for upcoming improvements. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we continue to evaluate potential enhancements.

Thank you again.

[QMAC-29916]

Carefree

James,

Found an easy fix IN Part. If you simply change the download to Payment/Deposit, you can fill in the category _LT CapGnDst. That's a WIN.

What's strange, and maybe you can investigate, is that I can't fill in _ST CapGnDist as a CATEGORY. Below is my screenshot. It's not in the drop-down list. I can't manually type it in. I could make a new category for ST, but why is _ LT CapGNDst able to assigned to a transaction but _ ST CapGnDst is not able to be assigned to a Cateory? Maybe the expectation is that you just treat it as regular income, but it would be nice to keep things organized come tax time. Can you check on this one, please? I am not asking about Budgets. I am asking about assigning a Category.

[Edited - Readability]

Quicken James

Hi @Carefree,

Thank you for the follow-up information.

I’m glad you were able to find a workaround for the time being! Unfortunately, we don’t have any additional information on why these items cannot currently be added to the budget. I understand how helpful it would be to have this functionality available. However, our product development team is responsible for reviewing product ideas and determining which features and enhancements will be implemented.

Thanks again!

Carefree

You are missing the point on my last post. I was NOT trying to add this to budget. It's showing in the budget. I was trying to assign the ST category to a transaction just like I could the LT category. You improperly edited my post. I will try to fix it.

Carefree

Ok for everyone I decided to fix this once and for all for LT and ST gains distributed from funds, not your individual transactions.

Three new categories

Income>Capital Gain Distributions

Subs for LTCG and STCG each with Schedule D for tax related.

Shows at top of the Budget for Income, both together.

I went back to my one main account and fixed about 5 years of year end distributions. Works well and ready to see what I get this year.

Also made a nice little report showing interest, dividends and these new categories year over year for the last five.

Quicken James

Hi @Carefree,

Thank you for the clarification.

Glad you found a method that works for you.

If you need more help, let us know.

jacobs

Did you migrate to Quicken Mac from Quicken Windows? Those investment categories are carryovers from Quicken Windows; the categories in Quicken Mac do not use the leading underscore.

My data didn't come from Quicken Windows, but I think you'll find that manually using these legacy categories will work for certain instances but will not work in all reports, dashboard, budgets, etc.

But if you're happy using these or the new custom categories you created, and editing all such downloaded transactions, then you've got an imperfect but workable solution for your needs.

Carefree

In the new Budget vs Actual report, my method is working great. The new report is a very welcome addition.

For those wanting to record a stock sale, a ghost transfer account would likely be best.