I am not an accountant but it appears to me that this is not addressing the
real problem. The effect here is merely renaming the dummy account and
doing some sign switching.
I suspect that there is a problem in the chart of accounts. The OP says
that the dummy expense is affecting the investment. The dummy expense
account  should probably be a high (top?) level account unrelated to the
investments.

Dale

On Sun, Jun 7, 2026 at 1:05 PM David Warren <[email protected]> wrote:

> Yes as David R suggests:
>
> When income is originally deferred into a regular Ira, or when there is
> growth in the Ira value (interest, dividends, cap gains all don't matter)
>
> Debit asset:IRA $xx
> Credit income:untaxed:IRA deferred $xx
>
> Then when you withdraw capital from the IRA:
>
> Credit asset:IRA $yy
> Debit asset:other account $yy
> Debit income:untaxed:IRA deferred $zz
> Credit income:taxable:IRA $zz
>
> Note that zz might be less than yy in the event you have taxable basis in
> the Ira and hence not all of each withdrawal may be taxable.
>
> There should be no "dummy expense" account.
>
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2026, 1:33 PM David T. via gnucash-user <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I am not an accountant. I only have retirement accounts from which I have
> > not yet taken distributions.
> >
> > I am sure that Michael or others will correct me, but the income account
> > transaction should most likely be balanced by the income account that
> > funded the IRA originally (such as Income:Wages:Deferred or
> > Income:Dividends:Untaxed). For a fully taxable IRA, it might simplify
> > things to transfer the value of the IRA to a single equity account and
> > balance against that-- although that's just my uneducated opinion (and
> > would pose the problem of handling later interest transactions).
> >
> > I also do not know how the reports will handle these transactions. I do
> > not know specifically how the advanced portfolio would handle them.
> >
> > David T.
> >
> > On June 7, 2026 9:32:15 PM GMT+05:30, Wm Tarr <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >I'm in the UK but there is plenty about IRAs and RMDs in the list
> > archives.
> > >
> > >Wm
> > >
> > >On 2026-06-07 15:46, Fred Tydeman wrote:
> > >> In looking at the transactions, it is due to the way I entered my
> > >> Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) for my Regular IRA.
> > >> There are the two normal splits of:
> > >>   selling some shares and
> > >>   putting the proceeds into an asset account (bank).
> > >>
> > >> I wanted by RMD to show up as taxable income, so I added two
> > >> more splits of:
> > >>   Income account (IRA distribution)
> > >>   Expense account (dummy to balance that income).
> > >>
> > >> It is that dummy Expense split that shows up as both
> > >>   the unrealized loss and
> > >>   the brokerage fees
> > >>
> > >> Is there a better way to record the RMD as taxable income?
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> On Sun, Jun 7, 2026 at 5:34 PM Wm Tarr <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>     Try the various options for "How to report brokerage fees" to see
> > >>     if one
> > >>     makes more sense than the others.  If it is showing brokerage fees
> > >>     you
> > >>     must have entered them, surely?
> > >>
> > >>     Wm
> > >>
> > >>     On 2026-06-07 03:58, Fred Tydeman wrote:
> > >>     > I am looking at the Advanced Portfolio report for an account.
> > >>     > One of the holdings is a money market that has a constant price
> > >>     of $1.00
> > >>     > The Advanced Portfolio report shows an Unrealized loss for that
> > >>     money
> > >>     > market.
> > >>     > I am expecting a gain/loss of zero (since the price is
> constant).
> > >>     >
> > >>     > Also, that report shows a large amount of Brokerage Fees,
> > >>     > yet there are no fees for any of the transactions.
> > >>     >
> > >>     > Are these bugs?
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