Quicken and TT

On Jan 22, 11:36 am, PareReposte wrote:

From what I've read, Quicken 2008 is very buggy. If you read various threads, you'll see that very few people upgrade every year, usually about every 2 or 3. Since TT can download Schedule D (and B) transactions from many brokerages, I wouldn't upgrade just for that purpose. Investigate the online access and download facilities for your brokerage; there is a large list within TT of which ones allow downloading. I would much rather trust a download from the brokerage than an import from Quicken. Even in the best of times, it is just too easy to have a little (or big) mistake creep into Quicken transactions. I do check the downloaded schedule information against my Quicken records (and the 1099s), just to be doubly sure, but I have never trusted Quicken enough to allow it to be the direct source of ANY of my tax information. It's kind of a sad situation that these products are not in lock step with each other, but I don't feel they are. As an example, something I sold in December 2007 had a different cost basis in Quicken then in the brokerage records. I investigated all my records and traced it back to dividends that were reclassified in Dec 2006 to be "non dividend distribution". I have to assume this was ROP because it was the source of the reduced cost basis. But there is no transaction in Quicken that reflects this reclassification. Since I religiously download from my brokerage, I very much doubt I missed one single transaction. I believe the reclassification and cost basis adjustment was done only at the brokerage level. Thus their records were correct and my quicken records were not and I would have filed an incorrect Schedule D if I had relied on Quicken. Just my experience and perception, FWIW.

jo

No problems at all with it here.

That's generally my practice, but I upgraded from 2007 to 2008 a week or two ago; I did it only because the sale price at Costco was so low.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have done it. The reason isn't because of bugs, but because, from my perspective, there's no difference between the two--at least not with the features *I* use.

No need to update Quicken just for that purpose. Chances are you can go for three years without updating Quicken. I say three years because that is about how long Intuit provides stock price updates for a Quicken release.

The points you raise are very legitinate - but [IMO] an unfair criticism of Quicken as to tax reporting capabilities.

Reclassification of dividend income is a common experience to me and, in most cases, is not revealed until the Form 1099 or the Amended Form

Proper tax reporting in QW is a high priority for me and I anxiously await the 1099's and particularly the ammended 1099's so that I can go back and manually make the reclassifications in my QW registers. This is extra work [sometimes a lot!!] but important to me. Can say that my QW tax reports match the 1099's to the penny when I'm done - this goes back quite a number of years.

Am in the process of filing and ammended return for 2006 and one of the items is a dividend reclassification that a brokerage firm did not report; i.e., I paid taxes on dividends that were in fact ROC. My QW records helped tip me to this error.

As to the cost basis issue you raise, I don't completely trust the brokerage firms numbers. Have found on several occassions that they do not reflect ROC events; they simply report original acquisition costs. In these cases I use my [QW's] numbers to prepare Sched D - after careful scrutiny.

Bottom line, maintaining good records for tax purposes is not an easy task - certainly not "automatic' based on downloaded info. Look at your QW records and your FI's records with equal skepticism!!

PareReposte wrote in news:SXolj.8219$ec.449@trndny02:

TT 2007 Deluxe imported my data from Quicken 2007 Deluxe w/o a problem.

Hi, JM.

Amen!

We discussed this (amended dividend/return-of-capital/cost basis information based on post-year-end accounting) here just a couple of weeks ago, as I recall.

RC

I definitly do regard both with skepticism, but this is the first time I've experienced a discrepancy in a cost basis that stood out so blatantly. I've also not caught any of my brokerages over the years in erroneous cost basis figures, since I always track it thru a multitude of methods (and they always have been more accurate than me). I think this is the first instance where a reclassification did not generate an ROC transaction --- and I see lots of those come thru during the year, for better or worse--- so it was a new situation to me, a wakeup call to cross check every discrepancy. It hadn't occurred to me last year to make an adjustment to Quicken records based on the 1099. Now that I know this can happen, I will be more aware of the implications.

Hi RC

Yes, I followed that thread with interest - found your comments on the origin of ROC particularly informative. Had never seen a good explanation.

Question in this regard - when a FI reports a "Non-taxable distribution" for a position, are there any other possiblities other than ROC for this?

TIA - JM

Hi, JM.

Yes, there are a few, but they are kind of exotic and we don't see them often. For example, the fund may have invested in municipal bonds and have collected some interest which is not taxable by the federal government. In some circumstances, this interest can be non-taxable to the shareholders when they receive dividends paid from this interest. Or the fund - or one of the companies it invested in - might have suffered a casualty loss and collected some non-taxable proceeds that they pass through to investors. But we're going waaay out on some limbs here; these situations are few and far between. We are talking about income that was not taxable to the corporation AND retains its non-taxable status when paid out to shareholders, and that's pretty rare.

The capital that is being returned most often comes from one of two sources. In a corporate contraction, the company may decide that it doesn't need all the capital that investors put in, so it returns the excess to the shareholders. That's a true "return of capital". The other not-too-unusual sources is what we've already discussed: payout of more than the company's accumulated "earnings and profits". This can be done intentionally, from non-taxable earnings, or unintentionally because of accounting errors or adjustments. As you probably know, states generally have laws that protect the corporation's creditors from payouts that leave the corporation with insufficient capital to meet its debts and obligations.

And remember, I've been retired a long time. There probably have been a few more developments in those years, so always check with your own CPA for current information.

RC

Porter Smith wrote in news:Xns9A2DA2444C62Dmyport2000yahoocom@127.0.0.1:

I installed TT 2007 yesterday, and saw that it wouldn't import from Q05. I haven't used txf files since the import method became available, but gave it a try. The txf files worked much better than I remember from the old days. I haven't done a close analysis (I'm lacking many 1099s so I still need to look at my Q data for accuracy) but it looks like the txf file import did everything I need, so maybe I won't bother upgrading my Q05 for now.

scott s. .

Ditto - I never import from Quicken into Tax software. I prefer to run a report in Quicken and verify the results to what is reported to me.

Oilcan "jo" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com... On Jan 22, 11:36 am, PareReposte wrote:

From what I've read, Quicken 2008 is very buggy. If you read various threads, you'll see that very few people upgrade every year, usually about every 2 or 3. Since TT can download Schedule D (and B) transactions from many brokerages, I wouldn't upgrade just for that purpose. Investigate the online access and download facilities for your brokerage; there is a large list within TT of which ones allow downloading. I would much rather trust a download from the brokerage than an import from Quicken. Even in the best of times, it is just too easy to have a little (or big) mistake creep into Quicken transactions. I do check the downloaded schedule information against my Quicken records (and the 1099s), just to be doubly sure, but I have never trusted Quicken enough to allow it to be the direct source of ANY of my tax information. It's kind of a sad situation that these products are not in lock step with each other, but I don't feel they are. As an example, something I sold in December 2007 had a different cost basis in Quicken then in the brokerage records. I investigated all my records and traced it back to dividends that were reclassified in Dec 2006 to be "non dividend distribution". I have to assume this was ROP because it was the source of the reduced cost basis. But there is no transaction in Quicken that reflects this reclassification. Since I religiously download from my brokerage, I very much doubt I missed one single transaction. I believe the reclassification and cost basis adjustment was done only at the brokerage level. Thus their records were correct and my quicken records were not and I would have filed an incorrect Schedule D if I had relied on Quicken. Just my experience and perception, FWIW.

jo

Ken, I agree. I do however find 2008 more stable especially on my Vista Laptop.

Cheers!

Interesting. I ran 2007 and I now run 2008 on my Vista Ultimate machine here, and I have had zero compatibility issues with either one.

Sorry, I don't know how the word "compatibility" crept in there. I meant "zero 'stability' issues."

Glad to hear that. Even though there was not much difference between 2007 /

Cheers,

Cheers,