Download Invesment Transaction & Long Term desgination

bhata:

Sorry but I can't really understand your question. Long and short gains occur from sales of securities not from dividends. Mutual funds can "distribute" gains and mark them long or short. So which are you asking about, distributions or sales...or both?

When I get distributions from funds held at Fidelity they always are identified as div only, short term gain or long term gain. Of course with reinvested distributions it's a whole different transaction. Is that what you're talking about in your third paragraph?

Dave P.

Sorry my explanation was confusing. Let me give an example of a recent download. I had a download of Fidelity Freedom 2020, 4 transactions for 5/9/2008 shown as: #1 Action=Div, Memo="DIVIDEND RECEIVED", Dividend=$A #2 Action=Div, Memo="SHORT-TERM CAP GAIN", Dividend=$B #3 Action=Div, Memo="LONG-TERM CAP GAIN", Dividend=$C #4 Action=Bought, "Memo="REINVESTMENT", Total cost=$(A+B+C)

What I have to do for #2 and #3 is edit the transaction and move the $B/$C amount from the "Dividend" box to the "Short-term cap gain dist." (or "Long Term") box.

I would prefer not have to do this because I have made mistakes and I have to track it down at tax time. I was wondering if other investment companies sent transactions the same way as Fidelity. or if the transactions were sent the "correct" way.

I understand your question. My recollection for my distributions in my Fidelity account is that I have to do the same as you. I also recall that the Fidelity account distributions are different than those from Vanguard. I've not found it to be too inconvenient to parse out the "dividends" into the correct categories so I guess I haven't worried about it too much. I think you have to be careful that you don't override Quicken's share totals for each category. I think the best way is to do all the parsing is in one transaction that includes all the categories. (I'm strictly pulling this from my memory.)

When I change transactions #2 and #3, the Action changes to CGShort and CGLong and when I run TurboTax, it distributes the dollar amount to the correct tax category. The #1, #2, & #3 transactions only have dollar amounts and does not contain the "shares" bought as that is consolidated in transaction #4. I don't change anything in #4 and everything works out OK.

So I was wondering if other investment companies download transactions as ReinvDiv, ReinvSh, ReinvLg which does contain the Shares purchased. I'm thinking this is the way to resolve my complaint with Fidelity's method of download.

Thanks for your input.

I just looked at my Fidelity account, and I see the same thing that you do. Since it is an IRA, I haven't concerned myself with how they reported the dividends and capital gains.

I also looked at my Vanguard account, and I see ReinvDiv, ReinvSh, and ReinvLg transactions that were downloaded from them. So, it looks like they do it right.

Hope this helps.

-- Jim

AT Fidelity, what type of account holds the funds that you're discussing? Is it designated as a "mutual fund account" (that can hold multiple funds, but only funds) OR is it designated as a brokerage account (that can hold both funds and individual securities)?

I have both types of accounts at Fidelity. In some cases, I hold the same fund in both a brokerage account an in a m/f account ... and my recollection is that they download differently.

Note, however, that I'm writing this from memory, and could easily be mistaken.

db