Not really a PRC question but would be grateful for help because taxable accounts are new to me.
From the manual:
"Unrealized Capital Gains
For your regular investment accounts, there’s a column for entering the portion of the account balance associated with unrealized capital gains (i.e., untaxed growth, or account balance minus cost basis)…"
What's the fastest way to find unrealized capital gains? I would think it be on a tax form a broker issues or on a Dec. statement but didn’t see it.
I went to the Fidelity account online: Positions > a column named "$ total gain/loss". So I guess that’s it? But that is a point in time that varies daily because of the change in value of the positions . Is this the figure I input into PRC? It's not the same figure as it would have been on Jan.1st ( the date all other PRC data entries were made). Maybe it's not a big deal & a close-enough type of thing? Or do you guys really effort to go find this on a certain date such as Dec 31 or Jan. 1st? Thank you.
Hi Jo, I'll give you my inputs and maybe others will chime in as well. I pulled up one of my year-ending statements from Schwab and it shows Market Value, Unrealized Gains and Cost Basis. If you do the math you can verify that Unrealized Gains = Market Value - Cost Basis. I think the $ Total Gain on your Fidelity statement is probably the same thing as unrealized gains.
The market value (and the amount of unrealized gains/loss) varies constantly in the real world but we need to give PRC a starting point to use as a basis for making its future projections. That's the value at the end of the prior year. If you don't have the exact value, it's okay; just get as close as you can. Forecasting the future is not an exact science 🙂
Fidelity does not appear to provide information for cost basis or unrealized gains on monthly or year end statements. The positions page on Fidelity.com appears to be the best source for that information. "$ total gain/loss" provides the unrealized capital gains as of the current date. That number can be adjusted up or down to account for the change in account value since year end and approximate the unrealized gains at year end. A simpler calculation would be to subtract the current cost basis from the year end account balance to arrive at an estimate for the unrealized capital gains as of year end.
Most peoples capital gains will be taxed at 0% or 15%. High income earners will pay 20% plus a 3.8% surcharge on net investment income plus any impact of surcharges for Medicare IRRMA. For most people, an error in estimating the un-realized capital gains isn't likely to make a significant difference in the tax on sales of assets.
Stuart, For Fidelity customers, data set up in PRC might be simpler if users could enter their tax cost basis and have PRC calculate the unrealized capital gains.
Just to make clear (even though it is in the manual and PRC tool tips) for anyone reading this thread, that this doesn't matter for retirement accounts, only non-retirement brokerage accounts (as PRC enforces). There's no such thing as capital gains/losses in retirement accounts, it's all just income when you withdraw.
