> On Aug 31, 2021, at 8:32 PM, Lisa Rowell <lisa.gives...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm working my way through my account history after a massive GnuCash import,
> straightening out issues with missing realized capital gains/losses and came
> across an event that I can't figure out how to properly handle.
>
> I held shares of a fund called Spartan 500 Index Investor Class (FSMKX) which
> merged with Spartan US Equity Index Investor Class (FUSEX) at some odd rate
> around 1:0.513. When I did the import, I ended up with an account for FSMKX
> and an account for FUSEX and a manually entered exchange transaction which
> did a sell of FSMKX shares and a buy of FUSEX shares with no share price.
> This got everything balanced out as far as share counts go, but now I'm
> finding it's showing up as being not correct in the Trial Balance. It looks
> to me like the exchange is being interpreted as if an actual sell event had
> taken place.
>
> Can GnuCash properly account for this? The case in the manual's More Complex
> Merger example is a bit different because the example stock continued to
> trade under the same symbol, so that solution doesn't map well. I found a
> past mailing list thread that said that the proper way to account for this is
> as a sell transaction of the going away fund and a buy transaction of the
> fund that lives on with an accompanying Realized Gain transaction. This
> doesn't seem right to me though since I didn't sell the shares and did not
> realize a gain and I don't even have prices for the time of the merger. In my
> way of looking at it, the gain calculation should come at the time of sale
> and be based on purchase price of the various share amounts, and not at the
> time of the merger, since that maps to the tax view of things where I live.
>
> I understand that GnuCash wouldn't be able to calculate the realized gains
> post merger, and I'm ok with doing that in a side spreadsheet, but am more
> looking for a way around the bogus realized gain entry at the time of merger
> just to make the Trial Balance happy.
If you're not too compulsive and since this is presumably ancient history in a
personal book one simple way to deal with it would be to pretend that you
bought the FUSEX in the first place and ignore the FSMKX, but that might be a
little painful if you have a bunch of reinvested FSMKX dividend transactions
that you'd also need to change.
I've handled similar situations in the past by doing a simple transfer
transaction between the two accounts, as in CR FSMKX 513 and DR FUSEX 1000. As
long as there's no currency component to the transaction it shouldn't create a
trading imbalance in the book currency.
Regards,
John Ralls
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