Most of my mutual funds and exchange-traded funds distribute earnings in three categories — dividends, short-term capital gains, and long-term capital gains.
In the U.S., LTCG are profits from the sale of securities one year or more after purchase, and they are taxed at a favorable rate. STCG are profits from securities held for a shorter period of time, and they are taxed (usually? always?) at the higher ordinary income rate — same as salary or dividends. Statements from brokers and mutual fund companies carefully assign distributions to one of these three categories. This confuses many people because for tax purposes the STCG amounts are lumped in with dividends on Schedule B, as opposed to Schedule D, where LTCG (frequently referred to as just plain "capital gains") are reported. There may be exceptions; I don't know. Since STCG are combined with dividends at tax-reporting time, is there any need to use a STCG-only Income account in Gnucash, or can one safely put dividends and short-term capital gains in the same "dividend" income account? I suppose it might be considered poor accounting practice, but I'm asking as a non-professional who just uses this software to keep track of my personal finances and help me at tax time, which is fast-approaching. If there is a reason to maintain a separate STCG income accounts, please enlighten me as to why and when it would be helpful. If it matters, I use GnuCash 4.9 on Windows 10 Home. Thanks to all in the GnuCash community ~Art~ _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
