Re: wrong tax basis

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In Reply to: wrong tax basis posted by Mike T. on December 16, 2002 at 17:35:37:

: Mark
: With the spin off of Comcast, ATT sent out a worksheet to track ATT tax basis back thru 1959.

: Of course when I completed and checked the hand calculation of my att tax basis - it was wrong from FM file (shares correct). I'm sure I made a mistake or two in the FM spin off entries along the way over the years.

: I think one mistake was with the file |scale prices entry. Wrong date range or factor (many adjustments over the years) for the basis to be wrong, but to keep the # shares correct.

: I want to fix the FM basis now that I calculated the correct basis by hand. The problem is that I don't know how to fix it without screwing it up even more.

: I don't think I can audit and correct previous scaling entries like I can fix splits and so forth.

: The FM tax basis is way too low. I found that I can artificially inflate the original purchase price back in 94, to increse the basis, but I think that is the wrong approach.

: What do you suggest I do to correct the basis and maintain the correct number of shares?

: Thanks much.
: Mike T.

Hi Mike,

I would suggest going back and fixing up your transactions/prices to reflect
what really happened. Depending on where you're at now, that may be more
work, but it is the most accurate. You can modify any transaction/price.
You can also un-do price scaling by scaling again by the inverse. Granted,
you have to know what you scaled by the first time, to un-do it.

The recommended way to handle splits is documented here:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/spin.html

It sounds like you've been following that approach anyway.

Historical prices are easily re-retrieved using the Yahoo (Historical) quote
server. If you have a bunch of transactions, and you're not sure how you
scaled them, then you may need to debug this by looking at the recorded
price versus the actual price to figure out how much it has been scaled by.

Thanks,
Mark
--
Mark Beiley

Fund Manager, portfolio management software for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/00/XP
/XP

Replies:

• Re: wrong tax basis Mike T. 18:12:39 12/17/02 (1)
  • Re: wrong tax basis Mark 19:01:33 12/17/02 (0)