I donated some appreciated stock to charity. If I use the "Remove Shares" option on the account, the gain shows up as a capital gain. I don't see an option that lets me remove selected shares from an account and yet not have them show as a gain.
John
I have Q2007, too. If I do a Removed action on appreciated stock I'm not seeing any realized gains on a Capital Gains report. The report shows gross proceeds equal to cost basis, for a $0 gain.
It sounds like you're doing something more than a simple Removed action here.
Here's one way to make the accounting work in the sense of showing a charitable donation equal to the appreciated value of donated stock:
(I'll assume market value of donated stock is $5,000.00 and the stock's basis is $1,373.68 for an unrealized gain of $3,626.32.)
1)Do a Return of Capital transaction for this stock, entering the amount of unrealized gain ($3,626.32) as a *negative number* and specifying that the transfer account is the same account in which the security is held. Result: the cost basis of the stock is increased to the market value( $5,000.00) and there's no change in cash in the account. 2)Do a sale of the stock at market value. Result: No gain or loss on sale, cash in account increased to $5,000.00, stock is out of account. 3)Do a MiscExp transaction for $5,000.00 with an offset to "Charity." Result: Cash in the account is reduced by $5,000.00 and an expense of $5,000.00 to Charity is created.Of course, the cash flows are entirely fictional but you end up where you want to be.
Tom Young
Asimpler method is to use Share Removal and then in one of your other accounts (I use a checking a/c) add a Deposit for $0 and split like this:
Eric
Eric
Yes, that's simpler, but you end up understating your Misc. Expense line by the amount of the donation.
Tom Young
But that is not an item that affects taxes.
You could set up an item specifically for donations off-set
Here's another, simple, approach to dealing with the situation. But first, if you're simply doing a Remove shares transaction for the donated stock you should see no capital gains for those shares. SO if that isn't happening I think you need to be sure you're using the right transaction type.
Then, if you use It's Deductible, just enter the stock transfer information there and TurboTax will pull in the information appropriately for you income tax reporting.
Hope that helps.
Thanks, everyone. I misspoke about the capital gains: A Capital Gains report in Q2007 showed the removed shares but had the basis and sales price as the same, thus no actual capital gains. The report did show those shares and I'm sure TAT would have picked it up. I may try one of the suggested workarounds but it would certainly be nice if Intuit made a provision for this very common transaction. There seems to be a dearth of actual improvements from release to release while a transaction like this isn't covered.
John
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