How do I account for cost of dividend reinvestment?

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OTTBMom
OTTBMom Member ✭✭
edited April 2023 in Investing (Mac)
I have a stock account with a company that charges me a fee for each transaction. So when I get a dividend, even though it's reinvested, they deduct a portion for that cost.

And example: Stock A declares a dividend, and the total I get is $100. But the brokerage keeps $5 for doing the transaction, so I actually only get $95 reinvested -- even though I will have to pay tax on the total dividend of $100. What I find in Quicken is that I can never get the stock price to come out right, because I can only ADD the $5 as a commission.

This (expletive deleted) brokerage also does not allow me to download transactions, so I have to enter them manually. My problem in Quicken is that I can't seem to get that $5 accounted for as a deduction. If I put it in as a commission, the total goes to $105 which of course impacts the price at which the dividend was reinvested. How can I do this properly? Currently I've got the stock set up as just a regular brokerage account with a single "mutual fund" which or course in my case is a stock. Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

Comments

  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
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    I think you need three transactions for each of these dividend events:

    1. A transaction of type Income>Dividend for $100 which will put a (temporary) cash balance in the register
    2. A BUY transaction showing purchase of $95 worth of the security (leave $5 cash in the account)
    3. A PAYMENT/DEPOSIT transaction for $5 with category of Investment Expense or Brokerage Fee or whatever you want to use (leaving $0 cash balance in the account).

    Now I have to ask… isn't there any way you can move this account to one of the low cost brokerage firms like Fidelity, Vanguard or Schwab?

    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • J_Mike
    J_Mike SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2023
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    An alternate approach:

    Use the Reinvested Dividebd transaction.

    Enter $95 as the Dividend.

    nter $5 as Commision.

    The $5 Commiion adds to the Cost Basis and results in a tax advantage of resucd capital gains on future sale,

    QWin & QMac (Deluxe) Subscription
    Quicken user since 1991

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