Re: wrong tax basis

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In Reply to: Re: wrong tax basis posted by Mark on December 17, 2002 at 13:57:28:

: : 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
:

Mark:
I suspected the repair would be time consuming to implement. I was hoping for the 'magic bullet' fix.

The fix would be trivial if the 'scale' operation was available for editing. I suspect that one (or more) scale operations I did had the wrong DATE RANGE. That error would take hours to find and fix. I think I'll start over with historical prices ;(

You are the boss, but maybe an upcoming FM version will include a way to edit a scaling operation that went wrong (I can wish,,, it is Christmas!) I have 4 ATT accounts that need attention !!! I shake every time I use the scaling function because I know it is a one way trip!

Thanks for the advice.
Happy Holidays
Mike

Replies:

• Re: wrong tax basis Mark 19:01:33 12/17/02 (0)