We just released the 2015 8949 IRS tax forms. If you have sold any stocks or mutual funds in 2015, then you can generate IRS Form 8949 to calculate your gain or loss on a stock sale. EquityStat will automatically calculate your short-term gains and losses and long-term gains and losses and generate a PDF 8949 form. You can then save or print out this form and give it to your accountant or tax preparer. To generate Form 8949 click the Tools menu and then select the Generate Form 8949 menuitem.
Category: EquityStat Tips
New Features in the Portfolio Manager
We have added a few new features to the portfolio manager.
Portfolios
You can now create multiple portfolios to group your investments from multiple accounts. For example, you can have a portfolio for your stocks, mutual funds and 401k. To create a new portfolio click the New menu and then choose the New Portfolio menuitem. Click here to learn more about portfolios.
New Performance Metrics/Columns
We have added a few new performance metrics – Quarter Return, P/E ratio and Dividend Yield. To see these columns in your portfolio click the Options menu and then choose the Change Columns menuitem.
Maximize Portfolio
There are times when all the investments in the top portion of your portfolio don’t display. To see all of your investments you have to scroll around. We have added the ability to maximize the portfolio so that we display as many investments as we can. To maximize your portfolio click the three line graphic in the upper left hand corner of your portfolio and choose Maximize from the drop down menu. The top portion of your portfolio will be expanded and the transaction section will be moved down to accommodate the investments section. This just gives you a way to make the most of your screen space and display more of your investment data. To restore your portfolio in panes (the default setting) click the Restore menuitem from the drop down menu.
Do you have any ideas for a new feature? Contact us and let us know.
Creating multiple portfolios – New Feature
We recently added a new feature to your EquityStat portfolio manager. You can now create multiple portfolios for your account. Having multiple portfolios gives you the ability to group and separate your investments. For example, you can have a portfolio for your individual stocks, a portfolio for your mutual funds and a portfolio for your 401K.
To add a new portfolio click the New menu and then chose the New Portfolio menuitem from the dropdown menu.
You will then see two new tabs. A tab for your current portfolio and a tab for your new portfolio.
To edit the name of your portfolio click the pencil icon, which will display an edit box.
Next type over the current portfolio name with the new portfolio name and click the Save button.
To view the investments of each portfolio click on the portfolio’s tab. From here you can also add new investments to the portfolio as well as edit investments.
To view the view the performance all your entire account (all portfolios) click the Account Value box at the top.
To delete a portfolio first delete all the investments in the portfolio. Once the portfolio is empty, click the ‘X’ icon in the portfolio tab.
Behind the Design
Behind the Design of EquityStat’s Portfolio Manager
EquityStat’s portfolio manager was built for investors by investors. As investors we found many portfolio managers just didn’t work how we wanted them to. Whether the portfolio manager was from a brokerage account, mutual fund or from a software company, many just didn’t work well. This was a driving force for us building EquityStat’s portfolio manager.
One major problem of other portfolio managers is they don’t refresh your investment prices and portfolio value automatically. To see your latest values, you have to manually refresh the page.
We didn’t want our portfolio manager to behave this way. With our portfolio manager your prices and portfolio values are updated automatically without you having to refresh the page. Every 15 minutes we query the latest prices of your investments and update your portfolio. In the upper right hand corner, we even display the last time the quotes were updated. All of this happens automatically without you having to constantly refresh the page to see how your investments are performing.
Another problem of other portfolio managers is entering transactions. When entering transactions the portfolio manager will post back the transaction to the webserver and then do a page refresh with the new data. This is very cumbersome.
EquityStat’s portfolio manager does all of the saving in the background. When you add or edit a transaction, the transaction is saved and updated behind the scene. The only thing you see is notification at the top of the portfolio that the transaction has been saved. The benefit of this is less page refreshing and a more natural, less cumbersome way of entering transactions.
In the coming weeks, we will highlight more design features or our portfolio manager and how it benefits our users.
Changing Columns in Your Portfolio
By default we display a pre-configured set of columns for your portfolio. If you desire you can easily change the columns that are displayed in your portfolio. To do this click the Options link at the top of your portfolio and choose the Change Columns menuitem.
Clicking the Change Columns menuitem will display a list of columns that are available and a list of columns your are currently using. You can add and remove columns as well as change the order of your columns. If you want a description of a column, just click on the column in either of the lists.
When you are finished change your columns, click the Change button to save your changes and get back to your portfolio.
Getting Started with EquityStat Portfolio Manager
Quick Start Guide
Here is a quick getting started guide for using EquityStat’s portfolio manager.
After you join EquityStat, you will be logged into your account. Since you have no investments in your portfolio, you will see the page above. From this page you can click the New Investment button to add a new investment to your portfolio.
After clicking the New Investment button, you will be presented a dialog where you can enter a buy transaction for your investment. Using the dialog, enter the symbol of your investment, the date the purchase took place, the amount of shares purchased and the price for each share. When finished click the Save button. Once you have entered your first purchase, you can then enter other transactions such as other buys, sells and dividends.
The image above shows a portfolio with several investments already entered. The top table will show all of your investments along with data about the investments. Below the investment table are the transactions for the selected investment. You can sort your investments and transactions by clicking on a column heading. In addition you can expand a column by putting your mouse between columns and then drag to lengthen the width of the column. Above the investment table is a summary of the portfolio which will show you the total portfolio value, the total dollar return, the gain/loss for the day and the year-to-date return.
If you want to enter a new investment that is not in your portfolio, click the New menu and then choose the New Investment menuitem. If you want to add transactions to an existing investment, go to the transaction table below the investment table and click the Add button. A new row will then be added to the transaction table where you can add a new buy, sell, dividend transaction as well as many other transaction types. You can also edit an individual transaction by selecting the transaction and clicking the Edit button. If you want to remove a transaction, click the Delete button.
If you have investments in our portfolio that have been sold and you don’t want them to show, click the three line graphic at the left and choose Hide Sold Investments menuitem. This will hide any sold investments. To view your sold investments click the graphic again and choose View Sold Investments.
Cost Basis
What is Cost Basis?
Investopedia defines cost basis as:
The original value of an asset for tax purposes (usually the purchase price), adjusted for stock splits, dividends and return of capital distributions. This value is used to determine the capital gain, which is equal to the difference between the asset’s cost basis and the current market value. Also known as “tax basis”.
Why is it important?
The IRS is requiring more and more reporting of your cost basis of your investment. They also require your report the capital gains/losses of your investments. To calculate your capital gains you need to know your cost basis.
How do you calculate it?
On the surface calculating cost basis sounds easy. Just use the price you paid for your stock. For example, if you purchased a 100 shares of XYZ company for $120 then your cost basis is $120. However, things get complicated if you had 3 for 2 stock split. Also, what if you purchase an additional 50 shares for $90? What if you have a split, reinvest capital gains and purchases in a given year? What is your cost basis? Now things get really complicated.
How EquityStat makes things easier
With EquityStat all you have to do is enter your purchases, splits, capital gains and we will calculate your cost basis. Then when you sell your stock whether all of your shares or just some of your shares, we can easily calculate your gain or loss. You can then generate IRS Form 8949 that will show your cost for each investment you sold in the last year.
TurboTax and Investment Taxes
Do you use TurboTax to calculate your investment gains and losses? Do you use TurboTax to generate form Schedule D or Form 8949? If so be aware that TurboTax is now charging extra for these features.
In addition to paying $59.99 for the Deluxe version of Turbo tax, if you want to calculate your investment capital gains or losses from stock, mutual fund or ETF sales you will have to pay an additional $20 or $30.
You can read more about the changes to TurboTax here.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-intuits-catastrophic-turbotax-20150118-column.html
If you are looking for an alternative to TurboTax for calculating your capital gains or losses, checkout EquityStat. With EquityStat you can generate IRS Form 8949 . Form 8949 is used to report your short and long term capital gains and loses. Once you enter your purchases and sales of your investments into EquityStat, you can then generate Form 8949 and use this form to fill out your Schedule D Form.
Investments, Taxes, Form 8949, Schedule D
Selling Investments and the IRS
The IRS is requiring more reporting when you sell your investments. Specifically, they require you to report the investment cost, cost basis in investment terminology, and the gain/loss from the investment sale. If you purchase 100 shares of a stock and sell 100 shares of the stock, your cost basis is easy to calculate. Things get more difficult when you purchase shares in different lots. For example, you purchase 100 shares in 2011, 50 shares in 2012, 200 shares in 2013 and sell 160 shares in 2014.
Form 8949
What is your cost basis in the above scenario? This is not an easy calculation to do. To make things even more difficult, you have to report both your short term gains and long term gains to the IRS separately. Fortunately, EquityStat makes this easy. EquityStat calculates your cost basis for each investment and can also generate IRS Form 8949 which is a report that shows your gain/loss on each investment sold. Your tax preparer can then use Form 8949 to create the IRS Schedule D form.
To Generate Form 8949, click the Tools menu at the top of the portfolio and then click the Generate IRS Form 8949. Choose your tax year and EquityStat will generate the report showing both your short term and long term gain/loss on each investment you sold during the tax year.
How did your investments do in 2014?
According to the Wall Street Journal the best stock of 2014 was Southwest Airlines (LUV). It was up 123%. The worst stock of 2014 was Transocean (RIG). It was down 62%.
You can see the list of best stocks here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2014/12/31/5-best-stocks-of-2014/
You can see the list of worst stocks here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2014/12/31/5-worst-stocks-of-2014/
How did your investments do in 2014? What was your best stock? What was your worst?
If you are not tracking your investment’s performance, consider using EquityStat. With EquityStat you can track the overall performance of your portfolio as well as the performance of each individual investment. EquityStat tracks the annualized return, daily gain, overall gain and many other metrics of your investments. With these metrics you can easily determine what are your best investments and what are your worst investments.