On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 11:11 PM, Jim Robinson <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Has anyone already worked through whether or not ledger
> v3 can be used to track estimated taxes owed on stock?
>
> I just switched from a university as an employer to a
> private company when our dept was spun off, and
> now I need to think about moving my old 403b into
> a Roth IRA.
>
> That means paying taxes on the pre-tax contributions,
> on employer contributions and matches, and on the
> gains.
>
> But I also put in post-tax contributions, so I have
> a cost basis that lowers my tax liability on the
> account, and I was thinking of trying to plug that
> information into ledger to give me automated
> entries under Liabilities for the estimated taxes
> eventually due.
>
> Anyone already work through this kind of thing?
>
Depends what you mean.
If you mean to use Ledger as a calculator to figure out the one-time task
of how many taxes you will pay on this conversion, that's a task best left
for a spreadsheet, not Ledger. I think that this is what you're asking for.
If I read your question correctly, Ledger can't help very much with this.
But if you mean "continuously", e.g., given some unrealized gain against
positions, how much of it can be considered due to the tax-man, always
calculated based on current ledger, I think you would need a custom script
to report that. You do have the cost basis of all assets in the Ledger, so
it would be possible to use this to estimate your taxes.
Otherwise, here are a few things related to taxes that I do:
- I cross my "holdings" report with a set of features, one type of which is
"Taxable" or "Non-Taxable", and then I can aggregate all market values and
can tell how much of my holdings are taxable in the future. It reports
something like this:
Taxable Holdings XXXXXX.XX USD
Non-Taxable Holdings XXXXXX.XX USD
I don't go further into calculating the precise amount.
I would do this in Python if I had to.
Thinking more about it, it's actually unfair to compute one's net worth
using taxable amounts; it should always be adjusted for tax due. Hmmmm, I'm
going to do this.
- I track my pre-tax contributions using a made-up commodity called
"IRAUSD", which represents a potential contributions that I'm allowed. At
the beginning of the year, I obtain an income of the annual amount, and
deposit those to an asset account:
2014-01-01 * "Allowed pre-tax contributions for 2014"
Income:US:Contrib:PreTax -17500.00 IRAUSD
Assets:US:Contrib:PreTax 17500.00 URAUSD
When I make a contribution via a salary entry, I debit from the asset and
credit the expenses account:
2014-03-15 * "Salary deposit"
...
Assets:US:Vanguard:Cash 2000.00 USD
Assets:US:Contrib:PreTax -2000 IRAUSD
Expenses:Taxes:TY2014:Contrib:PreTax 2000 IRAUSD
...
At the end of the year, if you did not max out the account, you have to
write off the remainder of the Assets:US:Contrib:PreTax account, those
contributions vanish.
During the year, the Assets account tells you how much contributions remain
that you are allowed, the Income account is fixed at the amount the
government sets the max for that year, and the Expenses account tells you
how much you've contributed to it so far.
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