> That's the most useful thing I can think of. It would allow a capital > gains report to DTRT *if* lot identification was needed/useful (and it > hardly ever is). >
Lot identification often isn't useful because it's more of a pain to dig up the records, then to just sell whichever old shares and pay the taxes. That's why I use GnuCash rather than a filing cabinet or a shoebox. Lot identification has some very valid uses as a tax management strategy. Let's say I know my income (and hence my taxes) is going to be abnormally high because of a large bonus, but I still need to cash out a portion of liquid investment because of some immediate cash requirements. I'd like to sell the shares with the highest basis that still qualify for long term capital gains so that I minimize my tax burden. (Remember, I'm selling because I've hit a cash crunch, not because I'm trying to take my profits and reinvest). This sort of tedious recordkeeping is exactly the sort of thing that computers excell at. GnuCash should make it easy so that lot identification can be useful. I'm not expecting GnuCash to make recommendations on which lots to sell (if I wanted my financial program to talk down to me I'd use Quicken), but I would like to be able to use it to track which lots I sold. _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnucash.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
