Hi,
I'm looking for some beancount (and maybe general accounting?) advice here:
Investing successfully in stocks makes you a subject for capital gains
taxes. But investing in stocks comes with a cost for buying and selling
shares. That cost is deductible from your capital gains and, therefore,
lowers your taxes.
I'd like to keep track of my capital gains tax liabilities over the course
of the year. This prevents me from spending/investing money I don't
have/actually own. I'm wondering how I could do that, while being accurate
and factoring in the deductible costs.
My first approach to book/track my stock investments was really simple:
option "booking_method" "FIFO"
option "operating_currency" "EUR"
plugin "beancount.plugins.auto_accounts"
2017-06-26 * "" "Open broker account"
Assets:Broker:Cash 385 USD
Equity:Opening-Account
2017-06-26 * "" "Buy AAPL"
Assets:Broker:Stocks:AAPL 10 AAPL { 38.37 USD }
Assets:Broker:Cash -385 USD
Expenses:Broker:Fees 1.3 USD
2018-06-26 * "" "Sell AAPL"
Assets:Broker:Stocks:AAPL -10 AAPL { } @ 48.55 USD
Assets:Broker:Cash 484 USD
Expenses:Broker:Fees 1.5 USD
Income:CapitalGain -101.80 USD
I didn't care about tracking outstanding taxes and I just booked the fees
as cost.
My next iteration factors in my tax liabilities (assuming a fantasy 10%
capital gains tax):
option "booking_method" "FIFO"
option "operating_currency" "EUR"
plugin "beancount.plugins.auto_accounts"
2017-06-26 * "" "Open broker account"
Assets:Broker:Cash 385 USD
Equity:Opening-Account
2017-06-26 * "" "Buy AAPL"
Assets:Broker:Stocks:AAPL 10 AAPL { 38.37 USD }
Assets:Broker:Cash -385 USD
Expenses:Broker:Fees 1.3 USD
2018-06-26 * "" "Sell AAPL"
Assets:Broker:Stocks:AAPL -10 AAPL { } @ 48.55 USD
Assets:Broker:Cash 484 USD
Expenses:Broker:Fees 1.5 USD
Income:CapitalGain -91.62 USD
Liabilities:Tax:TY2018:CapitalGain -10.18 USD
; Net worth is 473.82 USD, because there are 10.18 USD taxes outstanding
This approach is okay and gives me a rough estimation of my tax
liabilities. My problem is: It doesn't factor in the deductible fees.
(Well, it does factor in the fess paid in the selling transaction,
actually, but it disregards the costs from the buying txn(s).)
While this is a minor problem for this particular example it can become
quite relevant for bigger numbers/more buying txn coming with more fees.
So, how do I account for costs resulting from purchases correctly?
I guess, a possibility would be to allocate the buying fees proportionally
to the buy share price. This approach would increase the 2017-06-26 share
price from 38.37 to 38.37+1.3/10=38.5 USD.
The major disadvantage would be that I wouldn't really know how much fees I
actually paid. Hence, that is an option I rather dislike.
Are there other/better options/approaches dealing with that?
Kind regards
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