A lot of stock splits

[Cal Learner]

I have a stock that has a lot of small stock dividends. I handle those as a bunch of splits. I am getting strange behavior. Has anybody noticed a problem with a stock with a lot of stock splits? The problem I am talking about is wrong quantity.

[Cal Learner]

TLDR: Multiple splits work fine, but the AsOf date for the Portfolio gives wrong Quantity.

Test performed using splitrtest.ofx file. I tested importing into  copy of sample.mny.

This is what the   splitrtest.ofx  OFX file does:
Buy 100 "XTEST Multisplits" stock July 7, 2000 @$100 per share.
Annually have a 0.011111 per share stock dividend starting in 2001 through 2023.
This is entered as a 65521 for 64801 stock split.
Each year, you get an additional 1.11111 shares of the stock, but 0.11111 shares are sold as CIL (Cash in Lieu).
Entering this into Money required pressing the enter key some number of time (usually 3), and entering 100 when the box appears. The 100 represents $100 per share for the CIL.

Thus each year you gain one share of stock, and the per-share basis drops.

Test Results"
1. At the end, you have 123 shares of stock, which is as it should be.
2. The bug is that while the Portfolio AsOf date should cause you to reflect one additional share per year, the reality is that the Quantity number is a bogus value for earlier dates such as 8/8/2011, but is OK when set to the current date, giving the correct 123 quantity.

If anybody will actually play with the OFX file, for performance data you could   remove comments at OFX lines 419 and 432 to give position and price info. Commented out to make sure the 123 shares  was actually computed.

[Ken H]

I'm a little confused.  You initially mention that you receive stock dividends, but in your second post you say that the overall basis is adjusted downward.  If you're receiving stock dividends, then those would have their own basis and you'd pay income tax on the accumulated value received during the year.  If that's the case, why wouldn't you account for these in Money as a dividend reinvestment?  The company would have to provide the total value of each dividend and the number of shares received so Money would calculate the per share price.

[Cal Learner]

On a given split/ stock dividend, the basis of the total stays the same. So after the first stock dividend (before the fractional shares are sold off), you have 101.1111 shares with a total basis of $10000. But you immediately generate a sell for 0.1111 shares to maintain whole shares. So some basis from the $10000 gets sold off. Thus the total basis of the remaining 101 shares is a little less than $10000.

The tax paid is just on the CIL for the  0.1111 shares  which, if we assume the post-split per-share price is $100/share (for simplicity), will be a small long term capital gain. Being a capital gain, it could potentially be offset by a capital loss.

[Ameridan (microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com)]

It sounds like Cal isn't receiving regular stock dividends, but rather 1.1111 extra shares, thus I can see why he used stock split.   Although his basis remains correct, the yearly splits are going to throw off the Quantity number for earlier dates, just as it does for dates earlier than a singular stock split.

from Google AI:

Stock Dividends and Cash-in-Lieu

Stock Dividends: When a company issues extra shares as a stock dividend, it is usually not taxable when received. Your total cost basis remains the same, but it is spread across more shares.
Cash in Lieu of Fractional Shares: If a stock dividend results in a fractional share and the company or broker pays cash instead, that cash portion is taxable income. You report this on Form 8949 as a sale.

[Ken H]

Obviously I didn't know what I was talking about :(  Have never run across this.

FYI: On a different topic, after taking out the discover scrubber I've had no more problems using PS3.