It is tax season again. I hate tax season.
Whenever I sit down to do our taxes, I am reminded of the totally corrupt and ridiculously complex rules of the tax code. Rules so convoluted that an entire industry exists just to fill out the forms. Oh the tyranny!!
While a standard 1040 is ok, I have been struggling with one particular part the past few years: capital gains taxes on investments. I dread the schedule D...
I totally struggle with managing our investments. It seems like it should be easy and it just is not. Even Quicken, my champion of household expenses, totally sucks with our investments.
While I am still looking for a solution that doesn't suck the life out of me, I saw this brief article hidden in the paper. Figuring our investments should be totally easy for my broker, Schwab. It seems that it took a law for them to actually do so however.
If it works out, that may be my favorite law ever.
Investors to Get Reports on Cost Basis of Stocks
FEBRUARY 4, 2009
Wall Street Journal
A law passed last year requires brokerages and others to show on Forms 1099-B the cost basis of stocks, starting with those stocks that customers buy on or after Jan. 1, 2011.
Cost basis, used to calculate capital gains, is figured differently depending on how an investment was acquired. For a stock purchased by the owner, it is usually the price paid, along with commissions and other costs. Right now, it's up to the taxpayer to figure it.
Life is expected to get a lot easier for taxpayers and their tax advisers after the new reporting begins. Figuring cost basis can be tricky when a security has a history that includes corporate spinoffs or other events that complicate its lineage.
The change was intended in part to "simplify the tax work for investors by having brokers do the math," said Stevie D. Conlon, tax director of GainsKeeper, a division of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services that provides automated tax accounting and basis tracking.
