How to enter a negative dividend? (Q Mac Canada)
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Ce K
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How can I enter a yearend negative dividend, offset by return of capital in Box 42 of T3? (Canada, Version 5.11.0 Build 511.25626.100) MacOS 10.14.3)
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@Ce K
I am using the US version of Mac but face the same issue.
For background, securities report dividend income during the year but some if this income gets reclassified as Return of Capital after closing the books at year-end.
One can be faced with a tedious (and error prone) editing chore to go back and revise the original Dividend Income entries.
A shortcut method of entering this in Quicken is to enter a year-end negative dividend and an offsetting ROC. The net of these two transactions is zero as to cash balance.
The problem - QMac does not accept a negative dividend entry.
The closest work-around I have come up with is as follows;
Create an expense category; e.g., "Misc Inv Exp:Dividend"
Assign the same tax line item as regular Dividends
Enter a Miscellaneous Expense type transaction - using the above category.
This partially works in that total reported dividends is mathematically correct.
however, the downside to this method is that the Tax Schedule Report - under Dividend Income - now shows two subtotals for the security in question. One subtotal for the miscellaneous expemse and a separate subtotal for regular dividend income. Again, the result is mathematically correct but it can get confusing when trying to match Quickens' report results to your tax documents.
Bottom line - I have discontinued the "short-cut" method and resorted to editing the original Dividend Income transactions. A separate spread sheet comes in handy here to minimize chances of error.
FWIW, older versions of QWin accepted a negative dividend entry and thus the shortcut method was quite straight forward. Some time in the past couple of years, QWin stopped accepting negative dividend entries and so the shortcut no longer works there either.QWin & QMac (Deluxe) Subscription
Quicken user since 19915 -
Thanks, J_Mike. I appreciate your two workarounds, and have used one.Too bad Quicken closed off the negative in doing the entry the way I'd prefer. You'd think Quicken would have kept it available with a simple confirmation and/or match with a ROC.0
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q_lurker
Thanks for the suggestion of using an existing category for the second entry. I'm in QMac and no relevant category shows like _DivInc so I've created my own.0
Answers
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@Ce K
I am using the US version of Mac but face the same issue.
For background, securities report dividend income during the year but some if this income gets reclassified as Return of Capital after closing the books at year-end.
One can be faced with a tedious (and error prone) editing chore to go back and revise the original Dividend Income entries.
A shortcut method of entering this in Quicken is to enter a year-end negative dividend and an offsetting ROC. The net of these two transactions is zero as to cash balance.
The problem - QMac does not accept a negative dividend entry.
The closest work-around I have come up with is as follows;
Create an expense category; e.g., "Misc Inv Exp:Dividend"
Assign the same tax line item as regular Dividends
Enter a Miscellaneous Expense type transaction - using the above category.
This partially works in that total reported dividends is mathematically correct.
however, the downside to this method is that the Tax Schedule Report - under Dividend Income - now shows two subtotals for the security in question. One subtotal for the miscellaneous expemse and a separate subtotal for regular dividend income. Again, the result is mathematically correct but it can get confusing when trying to match Quickens' report results to your tax documents.
Bottom line - I have discontinued the "short-cut" method and resorted to editing the original Dividend Income transactions. A separate spread sheet comes in handy here to minimize chances of error.
FWIW, older versions of QWin accepted a negative dividend entry and thus the shortcut method was quite straight forward. Some time in the past couple of years, QWin stopped accepting negative dividend entries and so the shortcut no longer works there either.QWin & QMac (Deluxe) Subscription
Quicken user since 19915 -
Thanks, J_Mike. I appreciate your two workarounds, and have used one.Too bad Quicken closed off the negative in doing the entry the way I'd prefer. You'd think Quicken would have kept it available with a simple confirmation and/or match with a ROC.0
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I believe Q-Win has the same restriction. My policy has been to use the MiscExp transaction with the category assignment of _DivInc. I don't see the need for a separate category within QWin.
So my pairing for these recategorizations becomes a RtrnCap followed by a MiscExp. The first adds cash to the account; the second spends that cash. The second also reduces the total dividend total for the year for that security.0 -
q_lurker
Thanks for the suggestion of using an existing category for the second entry. I'm in QMac and no relevant category shows like _DivInc so I've created my own.0 -
Please put in a request to revive the ability to put in negatives. I did it from the 80s thru 2017. Why do they do this to us. BTW, the work around failed on my report for tax time because as you point out, there are scenarios where the report shows more dividends than were actually received.1
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