What is the base

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
June 28, 2023
2 replies
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I have a dividends reinvested stock that I have held for about 30 years. I plan to sell it in the near future. Here comes the problem, I'm not sure what the base I should use for the tax filing. Please advise.

Not A Product Question

KochuK

Hi mwltatg,

Here is what IRS says:

"Keep records of the amount of the reinvested dividends, the number of additional shares purchased and the purchase dates. You'll need this information to establish your basis when you sell the shares."

https://www.irs.gov/faqs/capital-gains-losses-and-sale-of-home/stocks-options-splits-traders/stocks-options-splits-traders-2

Understand the difficulty compiling 30 years of data. Please see if the administrator/custodian of the Dividend Reinvestment Plan can provide the cost basis.

Hope this helps.

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mwltatgAuthor

Thanks for the information. However, this is not what I was hoping for. It's an impossible task to list every reinvested share's cost for tax filing. It's amounted to at least 360 (30 x 12) transactions for just this stock.

NCPERSON1

@mwltatg - then assume the cost basis is zero for the reinvestments.....

NCPERSON1

@mwltatg - the basis is the cost that you originally paid for the stock plus the dollar value of the reinvested dividends at the time you inreinvested them. for most all publically traded stocks you should be able to reconstruct the reinvested dividends cost basis (check Yahoo Finance).