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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Cost
Basis Legislation Leaves Investors to Fend
for Themselves
Phoenix, AZ, February 26, 2011– Although the
Cost Basis legislation which requires
brokers to report their clients’ cost basis
has gone into effect as of January 1, 2011,
what most investors don’t realize is that
the requirement is only for securities
purchased after January 1, 2011. That means
that brokerage firms are only responsible
for what was purchased this year going
forward and not for the millions upon
millions of shares that investors currently
own. This is potentially a huge problem for
investors because at the end of the day,
they are the one that is responsible for
accurately reporting their capital
gains/losses to the IRS.
In the last several years, Cost Basis has
taken center stage with the IRS, Congress
and the Financial Services industry. The
focus began back in 2005 when the IRS
reported over $11 Billion dollars in
underreported capital gains by taxpayers in
their Tax Gap Study. Then in 2008, the
Economic Stabilization Act was passed by
Congress which included the Cost Basis
Legislation and since then, the financial
industry has been busy making sure that they
will be compliant going forward from 2011
for stocks and 2012 for mutual funds.
So what does that mean for an investor with
a broker and an investor without a broker?
Practically the same thing, unless your
brokerage firm is going to provide you with
your cost basis for the stocks you already
own as a customer service. If not, then it
means that you will have to calculate and be
legally responsible for your cost basis
information as much as the guy who trades
online in his underwear at 2:00 a.m.! As
many investors already know, trying to get
the purchase or sale price, all of your
reinvested dividends, corporate actions and
other critical pieces of information
necessary to calculate your adjusted cost
basis are time consuming, frustrating and
susceptible to human error.
Recently there have been articles and blogs
telling investors where they can go to
research pricing and corporate action
information in order to calculate their cost
basis, but Cost Basis adjustment was always
a very difficult calculation, even for
professionals, so how is an investor
supposed to research and calculate this
information accurately enough to report to
the Internal Revenue Service? What wasn’t
widely known until now is that there is an
amazing online tool that is available to the
public. It is called NetBasis and is
available at www.netbasis.com.
NetBasis will take into consideration all
corporate actions as well as any possible
dividend returns or return of capital that
may have occurred during the exact holding
period of the investment, so the information
is specifically tailored to the individual
investor You simply choose your security,
enter in your purchase and sales date(s),
and number of shares and NetBasis does the
rest in seconds. It also gives you the
ability to choose your accounting method
which investors are now able to do under the
Cost Basis legislation. NetBasis can also
calculate the cost basis for securities that
were gifted or inherited.
NetBasis is a system that was originally
designed for the financial services
industry. A professional version of NetBasis
is currently being used by brokerage firms,
accounting firms, Fortune 500 companies, and
universities, but now everyday American
investors can access the same tool and get
the same accurate results. For a small fee
of $19.50, an investor can enter multiple
buys and sells for one security and receive
their adjusted cost basis, gain/loss, sale
proceeds, fair market value and a detailed
accounting page that provides you with a
chronological listing of all of the
corporate actions and other adjustments that
have occurred to your security.
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