Investment Income Report --mis-reports dividend income

tlwright21 · October 1

I own a stock (symbol ATO). I have it setup in Quicken as a Security and it is held in a taxable brokerage account and also held in a IRA account. The taxable brokerage account does not have the Tax Exempt box selected but the IRA account does have the Tax Exempt box selected. The security DOES NOT have the tax exempt box selected since the security itself is not tax-exempt. When I am paid a dividend for the IRA account the Investment Income report classifies the dividend income as _DivInc. (I'm assuming it is because Quicken is looking at the Tax Exempt box on the security) It should be being reported as _DivIncTaxFree. What is the solution to fixing this problem, or is this a known Quicken bug that has not been fixed?

q_lurker · October 1

What you describe is proper behavior. The dividend received in either account is properly _DivInc. Now when you ask Quicken for taxable information (such as various Tax Reports = Tax Schedules, Tax Summary, etc.), Quicken will default to NOT including the IRA accounts in those reports.

If you want your Investment Income Report to not include income from IRA and similar accounts, exclude those account from the report.

You observation about dividends would also apply to capital gains, capital gain distributions, and interest income and possibly a few others.

tlwright21 · October 1

I don't want to exclude tax exempt dividends from the Investment Income report. I want the report to correctly report how much I received as taxable dividends and how much I received as tax exempt dividends. Otherwise there would be no reason for why the report has both categories in it. If the Account is marked as Tax Exempt then all dividends received under that account must be categorized as tax exempt (DivIncTaxFree). Otherwise there is no point in having an Account designated as tax exempt or not tax exempt. Its illogical. I hope we can get this bug fixed in some future release. Should be a simple fix. Look at the tax exempt box on the Account and then report the income accordingly. Surprised this has gone on so long without a fix

NotACPA · October 1

" I want the report to correctly report how much I received as taxable dividends and how much I received as tax exempt dividends. "

Then sub-total the Investment Income report by account.

AND, they are NOT "tax exempt dividends", they're "dividends in a tax exempt account". BIG difference.

q_lurker · October 1

The 'point' of having an account designated as "tax deferred" (not tax exempt) is so that tax related reports can properly by default exclude those accounts, transfers in and out of those accounts can be properly managed (which is still a challenge for certain situations), and tax planning and lifetime planning modules can operate with proper (best available) information. That point extends far beyond your simply assigning income to one side or the other.

_DivIncTaxFree and _IntIncTaxFree are applicable only for securities with the Tax-exempt box checked and are always applied independent of the account type holding the security. _DivInc and _IntInc are applicable only for securities with the Tax-exempt box NOT checked and are always applied independent of the account type holding the security.

The programming has handled the tax exempt security status and tax deferred account status in this manner for literally decades. It is not a bug. The program is behaving exactly as intended.

The solution you seek for the problem you perceive is to create two separate reports - one for taxable accounts and one for tax deferred accounts - and then add the various line items as you prefer to fit your needs.

If you care to extend this discussion —

Personally, I don't understand what you gain with what you seek. Supposing:

$5K dividend in taxable accounts
$2K tax exempt dividends in taxable accounts, and
$3K dividends in tax deferred account

The current Investment Income report would total those as $8K as dividends and $2K as tax exempt dividends. You want to see $5K and $5K. For a report covering both account types, what does 5 and 5 tell you that is better than 8 and 2?

If I am looking for tax reasons, I am not going to use the Investment Income Report with all accounts. If I am looking for non-tax reasons and choose the Investment Income report (or any other), the 8 and 2 figures are more accurate in my opinion.

Investment Income Report --mis-reports dividend income

Comments

Categories