Thanks, Jacob, I like that approach and finally it makes some sense to me.  
Its been driving me crazy for several days!
On Sunday, January 1, 2023 at 10:03:08 PM UTC-6 [email protected] wrote:

> I think this depends on how you want to keep your books - either 
> recognizing income in the year it is received, or waiting until the year it 
> is taxable. If the latter, then this seems to be caused by income in a 
> prior year being overstated, or more likely, opening equity the first year 
> you began keeping records was overstated because there technically should 
> have been a liability account for deferred income (created when a 
> contribution was made to the IRA). I think a potential fix is to debit an 
> Equity account and credit Income:RMD.
>
> 2006-01-02 * "RMD from IRA" #RMD
>   Assets:IRA                            -100 USD.  ; from tax free IRA 
> account (cash)
>   Expenses: Taxes                     20 USD.  ; to Uncle Sam - IRS 
> Witholding
>   Assets:InvestmentAC              80 USD   ; to taxable brokerage account 
> (cash)
>   Income:RMD                         -100 USD  ; taxable RMD
>   Equity:PriorPeriodAdj.            100 USD ; deferred income liability 
> from a prior year
>
>
> If you were keeping records in the year of contribution I think the entry 
> would have been something like:
>
> 1996-01-02 * "Contribution to IRA"
>   Assets:IRA                            100 USD 
>   Assets:Cash                        -100 USD  
>   Income:EarnedIncome         100 USD  ;  reduce income by the amount 
> being deferred
>   Liability:DeferredIncome     -100 USD  ;  create liability since this 
> income has to be recognized later
>
> and then the future distribution:
>
> 2006-01-02 * "RMD from IRA" #RMD
>   Assets:IRA                            -100 USD.  ; from tax free IRA 
> account (cash)
>   Expenses: Taxes                     20 USD.  ; to Uncle Sam - IRS 
> Withholding
>
>   Assets:InvestmentAC              80 USD   ; to taxable brokerage account 
> (cash)
>   Income:RMD                         -100 USD  ; taxable RMD
>   Liability:DeferredIncome        100 USD  ; deferred income liability 
> from a prior year
>
> All that to say, I think I would go with Martin's solution due to the 
> simplicity of counting it as income the year it was received, and not this 
> year - although it would still be necessary to track separately for taxes. 
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2023 at 6:05 PM Martin Blais <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> You could try posting like initially to a transfer account, and then a 
>> query like
>> select ... where account ~ ':RMD' and number > 0
>>
>> Alternatively, you could write a script that detects transactions with 
>> IRA and RMD postings and highlight those.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 2, 2023 at 8:15 AM Paul Marriott <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> what I am doing right now is adding a tag so I can at least track 
>>> RMD's.  Its really a deferred income stream, but since it was received in 
>>> the past before I started using beancount, I'll just tag them so I can 
>>> collect the year end amounts to check and/or include on my tax return.
>>>
>>> 2006-01-02 * "RMD from IRA" #RMD
>>>   Assets:IRA                            -100 USD.  ; from tax free IRA 
>>> account (cash)
>>>   Expenses: Taxes                     20 USD.  ; to Uncle Sam - IRS 
>>> Witholding
>>>   Assets:InvestmentAC            80 USD   ; to taxable brokerage account 
>>> (cash)
>>>
>>> On Saturday, December 31, 2022 at 5:52:56 PM UTC-6 [email protected] 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thinking further on this, this problem is so common that it deserves 
>>>> some new abstraction (beyond just solving the issue with a plugin). I'm 
>>>> not 
>>>> sure what that would look like, but some way to automatically update the 
>>>> value of a pair of accounts based on the flows into a third one is what 
>>>> I'm 
>>>> thinking about.
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jan 1, 2023 at 10:50 AM Martin Blais <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Jan 1, 2023 at 8:55 AM Paul Marriott <[email protected]> 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I have a taxable investment account and an IRA.  Every month RMD 
>>>>>> (required minimum distribution) is taken from my IRA and added to my 
>>>>>> investment account after Tax withholding.  I am not sure how to post 
>>>>>> this 
>>>>>> transaction.  Right now I have:
>>>>>> 2006-01-02 * "RMD from IRA"
>>>>>>   Assets:IRA               -100 USD
>>>>>>   Expenses: Taxes.       20 USD
>>>>>>   Income:RMD.              80 USD
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2006-01-02 * "Transfer from IRA"
>>>>>>   Assets:InvestmentAC.   80 USD
>>>>>>   Income:RMD.                   -80 USD
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The problem I want to record RMD as income, but with the above 
>>>>>> postings, the income account is net zero.  What am I doing wrong?  Or 
>>>>>> maybe 
>>>>>> I just cant record it as income, although it will appear as income on my 
>>>>>> Tax Return.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Technically they're not income, they're distributions. Taxable 
>>>>> distributions. I wouldn't book them under an income account.
>>>>> This is one of those cases - there are many more - whereby you want to 
>>>>> count the amounts incoming to that RMD account.
>>>>> There are two ways I've handled this in the past: (a) by mirroring 
>>>>> (with a plugin) the amounts posted to RMD to two distinct sets of 
>>>>> accounts, 
>>>>> (b - simpler) by issuing a query to count them up over a period of time 
>>>>> (the amounts don't automatically update any account).
>>>>>  
>>>>>
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