Hi Adam,
We track distributions from traditional retirement accounts as deferred
income by adding a pair of balanced splits to the transfer transaction.
For example:
Assets:Banking:Checking 100.00
Assets:Investing:IRA 100.00
Income:Deferred 100.00
Income:Deferred:IRA 100.00
Income:Deferred:IRA is flagged as "Tax Related" with the "F1099-R IRA
total dist - taxable" TXF category.
Regards,
Sherlock
On 6/11/26 1:20 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
12:36am -0000 06/11/26 David T. via gnucash-user <[email protected]>...:
1) Almost any sale of shares will result in gains or losses, and you should
track them as such. Since they have no effect on taxes, I shunt mine all to
Income:Realized Gains:Untaxed:Untaxed LT Gains. Recent discussions here
regarding distributions suggest that there may be situations where the
gains in a retirement account need to be tracked and reported separately,
but as I have not yet crossed this threshold, I cannot comment. . . .
I guess a distinction could be made between untaxed long-term and short-term
gains. As far as the OP's specific question, for any management fee expense
not tied to a specific sale of securities, offset it against interest.
For tax law compliance, I am not aware of a situation in which a
distribution from retirement funds could be a long-term capital gain and not
ordinary income. I'd be grateful for an example if I'm getting it wrong.
On June 11, 2026 5:52:21 AM GMT+05:30, Sherlock <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Clint,
Generally, there is no need to track lots in a 401(k) account. Otherwise, you should
treat the "Realize Gain/Loss" as non-taxable capital gain income. For example,
Income:Cap. Gain (long):Fidelity 401K:Fund A
Regarding the "microscopic amount of cash", if this is a change in the value of
a holding, this could be a rounding difference due to price accuracy or adjustment. If
there is a cash transaction, I think Fidelity should be providing the reason.
Regards,
Sherlock
On 6/10/26 1:36 PM, Clint Chaplin wrote:
This has absolutely nothing to do with using GnuCash itself, but rather
what accounts/structure I should be using, so you are perfectly free to
tell me this is the wrong place....
I have a 401(k) at Fidelity, and periodically an administrative fee or
bookkeeping fee is taken from the accounts. The funds for the fees are
raised by selling off microscopic amounts of the mutual funds the 401(k) is
invested in. I do understand that those sales are not considered
"disbursements" by the IRS, so no tax implications there. Also, the cash
that is raised by the sales I record as an expense, just to keep track of
it.
The really fun part comes when I scrub the accounts and the "Orphaned
Gains" are generated, which seem to represent the "realized gains/loss" of
the microscopic amount of mutual funds that were sold. What the heck do I
do with them? They are not cash income in the sense that I would think of
it, but they don't seem to be equity, either.
And, if that seems easy to you (it isn't to me), every so often Fidelity
will take some microscopic amount of cash from one of the 401(k) accounts,
but not sell any of the mutual fund to cover the expense. (we're talking
amounts up to $0.05). Fidelity seems to have conjured the cash out of
nothing, but I still would like to record it: the expense account to use
seems pretty obvious to me, but what "income" account should I use?
"Magic"?
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
[email protected]
To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
