Fair enough. I wanted to know if I'm missing something about the purpose of tracking cost in beancount and I guess the answer that it's mainly for tax reasons.
It's not that I'm philosophically opposed to it, more like I have 5+ years of transactions without the cost basis and I'm not sure how to start using it now without having to backfill everything at once. Is there a good way to record the lots I currently own (according to the brokerage) without filling in all the history that led to their creation? Although I'm still not clear on why I should consider it income when my 401k provider decides to automatically swap out the ETF I own to a different share class with a different ticker and price. On Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 10:21:49 PM UTC-7 redst...@gmail.com wrote: > On Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 6:49:49 PM UTC-7 Max Katsev wrote: > >> > Really? A realized gain is not income? >> >> Yesterday I had 10 MSFT (that I've bought a year ago at $170) in my >> Vanguard IRA account and $2500 in my Fidelity 401k. Today I've sold my 10 >> MSFT for $2500 in Vanguard and bought another 10 MSFT in Fidelity. I now >> have $2500 and 10 MSFT, exactly as yesterday, but somehow I've made $800 of >> income? >> > > I'm just as amazed as you that you think you *didn't* realize $800 of > income. Most tax jurisdictions would agree, but that doesn't seem to be an > issue in your case. You now have a stepped up basis in MSFT, with no direct > record of why. You also have no clue which lots you sold and which you > retained, meaning you have no clue what the tax liability of your portfolio > is. You can't make tax adjusted asset allocations or optimizations. > > Which is why IMO, this boils down to is what you're trying to model. If > it's just extremely basic net worth, your simplified model works fine. Go > for it. The thing I'd worry about if I were you is not storing cost basis, > particularly on what you sell, and not being able to get that from your > brokerage in the future when you discover a need for it. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/b268d671-ada8-4f1f-afe0-9aa19aa16f3cn%40googlegroups.com.
