On Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 3:53 PM Bakul Shah <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Aug 10, 2023, at 4:13 PM, Eric Altendorf <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 3:12 PM Bakul Shah <[email protected]> wrote: > >> [new user here] >> >> Consider this example snippet: >> >> 2023-06-18 * "Buy shares of XYZ" >> Assets:US:ETrade:Cash -110.00 USD >> Assets:US:ETrade:XYZ 10 XYZ {10.00 USD} >> Expenses:Financial:Commissions 10.00 USD >> >> 2023-07-21 * "Sell shares of XYZ" >> Assets:US:ETrade:XYZ -10 XYZ {10.00 USD} @ >> 12.00 USD >> Assets:US:ETrade:Cash 110.00 USD >> Expenses:Financial:Commissions 10.00 USD >> Income:US:ETrade:Gains -20.00 USD //anything >> else yields an error with bean-check >> >> As I understand it, actual capital gains in this case would be 0 when you >> consider the two commissions. >> > > At least in the US, yes. FWIW, what your ledger currently reflects is > that you made 20 USD in capital gains profits but paid 20 USD in > commissions, which is a legitimate way of looking at things, just not as > convenient for reporting "capital gains" for tax purposes. > > >> But if 20 shares were bought originally with a $10 commission, Cap gains >> income would be -5 dollars (since half of the original shares were sold). >> >> Is there a way to reflect the actual capital gains? >> > > Thanks for your response. Through a connection I asked a couple of > experienced CPAs the same question and they suggested this: > > [image: image.png] > > Not quite what I was hoping for! > I think this is a pretty standard way of doing capital gains taxes. Add the commissions to the cost when you buy, and deduct the commissions from the sale when you sell. This is what the linked beancount documentation means when it says: "A convenient method to automatically allocate the acquisition costs to the pro-rata value of the number of shares sold is to add the acquisition trading cost to the total book value of the position [....] You could even go one step further and fold the commission on sale into the price of each share sold as well" in this context, "book value" is the same thing as "cost", "cost basis", "acquisition cost", etc. (AFAIK) You can manually adjust your cost and proceeds in this way, and then beancount will compute the gain or loss that you expect. Here's what that would look like (I think): 2023-06-18 * "Buy shares of XYZ" Assets:US:ETrade:Cash -110.00 USD Assets:US:ETrade:XYZ 10 XYZ {11.00 USD} ;; Cost per share is 10 USD plus 1 USD of commission ;; Expenses:Financial:Commissions 10.00 USD Don't account for commissions here 2023-07-21 * "Sell shares of XYZ" Assets:US:ETrade:XYZ -10 XYZ {11.00 USD} @ 11.00 USD ;; Sale price per share was 12 USD minus 1 USD of commission Assets:US:ETrade:Cash 110.00 USD ;; Expenses:Financial:Commissions 10.00 USD Don't account for commissions here Income:US:ETrade:Gains ;; this will now be computed as zero. As you can see, doing things this way isn't as clear to the reader of the ledger. What doesn't exist in Beancount is a nice syntax for specifying the actual cost and proceeds, and separately specifying transaction fees, and asking beancount to do the desired computation, so you get clarity and the output you want. > > > This is apparently not yet figured out. > > See the documentation: > https://beancount.github.io/docs/trading_with_beancount.html#commissions > > > There is a link to a proposal for this but seems broken.... > > yeah, there are a few broken links on that site. it's probably obsolete anyway. the thread below is probably the most recent info: > > Also see my related question from yesterday: > https://groups.google.com/g/beancount/c/WnSDRjmp7k8/m/Srr_jhZpAgAJ > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/8ECDDC0D-41C1-47B3-A7D2-68921B64F5E6%40iitbombay.org > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/8ECDDC0D-41C1-47B3-A7D2-68921B64F5E6%40iitbombay.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAFXPr0uSpSy1WaX-hUOt36Sm1k45umLGb%3Dozn7E6EhLUJdDFhA%40mail.gmail.com.
