It would be clearer to split the TraditionalIRA account into four 
sub-accounts:
Assets:TraditionalIRA:Purchase Price
Assets:TraditionalIRA:Plus Appreciation
Assets:TraditionalIRA:Less Depreciation
Assets:TraditionalIRAl:Less Fees

These would be paired with one of the following income/expense accounts:
Income:Appreciation
Expenses:Depreciation
Expenses:Fees

A balance report would instantly give the net value of 
Assets:TraditionalIRA after accounting for fees and depreciation.
On Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:11:50 AM UTC+8 Aaron Stacy wrote:

> Ash makes sense thanks!
>
> On Mon, May 3, 2021 at 8:15 AM Ismael Bouya <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> There is a section about that in the manual ;)
>> https://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Buying-and-Selling-Stock
>>
>> In your case, that would be something like:
>> 2021-01-04 * "Fee"
>>   Assets:TraditionalIRA                     -1 TRADIRA {1 USD} @ 0.50 USD
>>   Expenses:Fees                           0.50 USD
>>   Expenses:Capital losses                 0.50 USD
>>
>> Here is how to see it: during that "fee", you’re actually "selling" one
>> action (TRADIRA) to pay that fee.
>> However that action is worth 0.50USD less than before, so had actually
>> two expenses: one for the fee (0.50 USD) and one for the loss of capital
>> which gets activated at that time (0.50 USD)
>>
>> The capital loss expense didn’t appear so far because you didn’t "spend"
>> them: as long as you keep them as TRADIRA, you don’t have any loss or
>> gain or capital, and the expense (or the reverse Income:Capital Gains)
>> only occurs when you actually do something of the action (in your case,
>> "pay something with it").
>>
>>
>> (Sat, May 01, 2021 at 06:23:54PM -0700) Aaron Stacy :
>> > Hi everyone, I'm trying to book a 401k fee. I'm using beancount, but 
>> > hopefully the syntax is similar enough:
>> > 
>> > ; Assume the price for TraditionalIRA was $1/share when purchased
>> > 2021-01-03 balance Assets:TraditionalIRA    10 TRADIRA
>> > 
>> > ; Now the broker wants to charge $0.50 in fees, and the price of 
>> > TraditionalIRA
>> > ; has dropped to $0.50/share. For tax purposes, the cost basis is all
>> > ; essentially zero, so (presumably to keep things simple) they just 
>> deduct
>> > ; (fee / share price) from the shares.
>> > 2021-01-04 * "Fee"
>> >   Assets:TraditionalIRA                     -1 TRADIRA @ 0.50 USD
>> >   Expenses:Fees                           0.50 USD
>> > 
>> > 2021-01-05 balance Assets:TraditionalIRA     9 TRADIRA
>> > 
>> > The problem is this is ambiguous about the cost basis now. It may not 
>> > matter for tax purposes, but I care. I'd like to simply deduct the 1 
>> > TRADIRA share from the lot purchased at $1/share, but that doesn't 
>> balance:
>> > 
>> > 2021-01-04 * "Fee"
>> >   Assets:TraditionalIRA                     -1 TRADIRA {1 USD} @ 0.50 
>> USD
>> >   Expenses:Fees                           0.50 USD
>> >   ; This transaction is -0.50 from balancing
>> > 
>> > So I suppose this makes sense since, because the price went down, I 
>> lost 50 
>> > cents, so that should come from somewhere.
>> > 
>> > What's a good account to take this from? Maybe Income:TraditionalIRA?
>> > 
>> > -- 
>> > 
>> > --- 
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>> .
>>
>> >    Hi everyone, I'm trying to book a 401k fee. I'm using beancount, but
>> >    hopefully the syntax is similar enough:
>> >    ; Assume the price for TraditionalIRA was $1/share when purchased
>> >    2021-01-03 balance Assets:TraditionalIRA    10 TRADIRA
>> >    ; Now the broker wants to charge $0.50 in fees, and the price of
>> >    TraditionalIRA
>> >    ; has dropped to $0.50/share. For tax purposes, the cost basis is all
>> >    ; essentially zero, so (presumably to keep things simple) they just 
>> deduct
>> >    ; (fee / share price) from the shares.
>> >    2021-01-04 * "Fee"
>> >      Assets:TraditionalIRA                     -1 TRADIRA @ 0.50 USD
>> >      Expenses:Fees                           0.50 USD
>> >    2021-01-05 balance Assets:TraditionalIRA     9 TRADIRA
>> >    The problem is this is ambiguous about the cost basis now. It may not
>> >    matter for tax purposes, but I care. I'd like to simply deduct the 1
>> >    TRADIRA share from the lot purchased at $1/share, but that doesn't
>> >    balance:
>> >    2021-01-04 * "Fee"
>> >      Assets:TraditionalIRA                     -1 TRADIRA {1 USD} @ 
>> 0.50 USD
>> >      Expenses:Fees                           0.50 USD
>> >      ; This transaction is -0.50 from balancing
>> >    So I suppose this makes sense since, because the price went down, I 
>> lost
>> >    50 cents, so that should come from somewhere.
>> >    What's a good account to take this from? Maybe Income:TraditionalIRA?
>> > 
>> >    --
>> > 
>> >    ---
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>> >    "Ledger" group.
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>> send an
>> >    email to [1][email protected].
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>> >    [2]
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>> .
>> > 
>> > References
>> > 
>> >    Visible links
>> >    1. mailto:[email protected]
>> >    2. 
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ledger-cli/d1750d80-b867-4dc0-be8b-ed8e223ae266n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Ismael
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> --- 
>>
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>>
>

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