Joshua,

thanks for your clarification! it is more clear now.

Thought I now have a question about how US expats, who do not use 
beancount, manage to do their tax declaration, but this is probably not a 
question for this group.



On Monday, September 9, 2024 at 8:11:02 PM UTC+2 Joshua Cabrera wrote:

> 1) Honestly, it depends. The answer is very dependent on whatever 
> statutory requirements and/or personal reporting preferences you have.
>
> Yes, if it is subject to capital gains, you would want to track your cost 
> basis. Capital gains occur when you purchase an asset and later sell the 
> asset for more than what you purchased it for, so you need a cost basis to 
> be able to calculate that.
>
> You could optionally track cost basis for things that aren't subject to 
> capital gains if you just wish to know how much you stand to gain from 
> exchange/conversion differences - e.g., you're an American currently living 
> in Europe and are curious to know how much you would gain if you decided to 
> liquidate all your EUR assets into USD and move back to USA.
>
> In finance, these differences would be referred to as statutory reporting 
> vs. management reporting.
>
> Continuing with the American expat living in Europe example, Americans' 
> worldwide income is subject to tax by the IRS. Under IRS guidelines, you 
> would want to track your FX amounts at their historical USD amounts - i.e., 
> using the exchange rate from the date of the transaction. So, let's say 
> you're an expat living in Spain and you get paid 1,000 EUR weekly, the USD 
> amount you would report to the IRS would vary slightly for each week based 
> on the prevailing exchange rate. You would not report USD amounts by 
> summing your EUR and converting using the latest exchange rate. For this 
> requirement, you could track your EUR's cost basis in USD and simply report 
> at cost - not market value.
>
>
> 2) I can't point to where in Fava's source how this is calculated exactly, 
> but it'd simply be the number of units (EUR) multiplied by the latest price 
> - this is the total current market value of your holding/position - less 
> the total cost basis of the holding. If you have more than one lot for your 
> position, then the cost basis per unit will vary by lot.
>
> You can get a breakdown by account in the balance sheet view by looking at 
> your assets and liabilities. The unrealized account under equity is simply 
> the sum of those amounts.
>
> If you want a more detailed breakdown, you can explore the holdings page - 
> see example below. Your unrealized amount would be market value less the 
> book value (cost).
>
> [image: Screenshot 2024-09-09 111919.png]
>
> If you look at the query, it will show how it's calculating everything.
>
> SELECT account,
>     units(sum(position)) as units,
>     cost_number as cost,
>     first(getprice(currency, cost_currency)) as price,
>     cost(sum(position)) as book_value,
>     value(sum(position)) as market_value,
>     cost_date as acquisition_date
>   WHERE account_sortkey(account) ~ "^[01]"
>   GROUP BY account, cost_date, currency, cost_currency, cost_number, 
> account_sortkey(account)
>   ORDER BY account_sortkey(account), currency, cost_date
>
>
> 3) Yes, go to help >>> filtering entries. 
>
> Your reporting issues are happening because you've changed your operating 
> currency to EUR from USD in your previous example.
>
> This doesn't make sense to me from an abstract finance perspective and 
> seems to be why you're getting funky results. If your operating currency is 
> EUR, then you would be tracking cost basis in EUR, not USD.
>
> I don't have a use for multiple operating currencies, but it seems like 
> others do, so you might want to explore using both EUR and USD.
> On Monday, September 9, 2024 at 10:24:51 AM UTC-5 [email protected] wrote:
>
>> On Monday, September 9, 2024 at 1:55:02 PM UTC+2 Chary Chary wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> This report does seem to be symmetric.
>>
>>
>>  Correction of typo:  This report does *NOT *seem to be symmetric.
>>
>>  
>>
>

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