Tax weirdness

[redbird]

It looks as though I can list March 15, 2002 as the date I acquired the Travelzoo stock--that's the date of the stockholders meeting, which voted to transform all the previous Travelzoo Bahamas stock into what I actually wound up selling. Figuring out when I acquired the Travelzoo Bahamas stock is probably impossible, given that the only record I'd have of that is in email received through my account at acm, an account that hasn't existed in several years. (The company is happy to let me log into their Web site--they emailed me the account information on request--but they not only don't show when I acquired the stock, the page it shows me doesn't note that I no longer own it, presumably because the buyer didn't need to tell them about the transaction, just put the stock certificate somewhere safe.) This is relevant because the forms for capital gains tax ask the date that the stock was acquired. The information wasn't handily available on Travelzoo's own Website, but they do link to the relevant part of www.sec.gov.

The basis is easy--zero. This is my "step three: profit!" Internet stock.

Now, I should stop procrastinating here and start doing actual tax figuring.

Comments

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

Googling around, that offer appears to have been from 1998, my spouse (who does corporate tax accounting) is fairly certain you'll get little fuss for simply listing that date as 1998. The primary thing is to make sure your long-term gains are long-term (which these would be) and so forth.

I think the Bermuda thing is going to mess up your chances at taking the little-known section 1202 qualified small business stock "half off your capital gains taxes" mojo, (http://www.venturechoice.com/articles/taxes_section_1202.htm) but if the total value of the stock is large you might want to run that by someone who knows that stuff cold.

[redbird]

Thanks!