Investment Q&A

Q: I don't often get timing right and mostly I get it right when I am not trying to. I sold AC (for a profit) mostly because I found other things that I could hold longer. AC may or may not sell off more but if I were to re-buy inside the 30 day window will that reduce my capital gains tax by averaging?

Q: I bought a spread call on Nexflix as one transaction and occur a loss. Do I report as 2 transactions on my taxes or one transaction? One option is profit and another one at loss. Am I allowed to claim a loss or it is not allowed for under 30 days.

Are there any specific Tax rules on trading spread options?

Thanks for the great service

Q: I am a very disgruntled customer after seeing my seeing my rrsp account (ETF STOCK NAME REMOVED) go from a gain to a loss due a notional payment/distribution (AKA phantom payment) causing my adjusted cost base to increase by $1.24. If my account wouldn't have shown a loss I wouldn't have picked up on this. After talking to your help line I am even more dissatisfied.
What is a notional payment?
It is a distribution declared by a fund or trust where no cash is paid to unit holders, but is considered taxable at the time it is declared. Notional payments are declared to avoid paying taxes on income earned within a fund or trust, but where the fund manager does not wish to deplete the resources of the fund or trust by paying distributions in cash. Notional distributions, sometimes called “phantom distributions” are taxable in the year declared, and will increase the adjusted cost base (ACB) of the security. You can usually identify a notional payment by looking for a TXPDDV payment, followed by a DRIP debit, for 0 shares.
If I understood what (ETF COMPANY NAME REMOVED) is doing with these so called distributions I would have never bought the etf as it makes such a small interest rate and then my adjusted cost base goes up by $1.24 by this phantom distribution causing a loss in(ETF STOCK NAME REMOVED). I am better off keeping cash in my account than holding (ETF STOCK NAME REMOVED).
This practice of passing on phantom distributions and causing losses to customers seems like a sneaky under handed way to pass on costs to keep your MER lower. I have lost trust in (COMPANY NAME REMOVED) ETF's.

Q: Good morning,
Just a quick clarification about a question I asked the other day about option buy backs. My question should have been whether you claim that loss this year, or do you roll it into the acb of the underlying stock,
thanks

Q: Hi group is it a good strategy to sell some of my big winners before the Federal Gov taxes capitol gain differently? - Do you agree this is an area (as well as other areas)) they will target to help pay for all the stimulus. If they took away all the capitol gains it would be very negative for a lot of folks. also please comment on how the govt taxes day traders and how they might get more aggressive in taxing day traders as business income Thanks for your insight

Q: I just got my T5013 for my 2 Brookfield companies and I can see what they've done to create the Corporations that pay eligible dividends but I don't understand why the taxable part far exceeds what I actually received. First, my eligible dividends have disappeared and I guess these go to the Corporation shares. However, on my BIP.UN I received about $2029 in distributions in 2020 but my T5013 shows distributions in excess of $8000 of which $4500 is Return of Capital. Any idea how my $2029 becomes $8000? PPY is much closer in amount, only about 6% higher than what I actually received.

Q: Brad asked a question on April 7th about phantom distributions. It is worth checking your investment statement to ensure they increase the ACB for capital gains. I have found it is not always done and investment houses don't always understand the proper procedure.

Paul

Q: Good morning 5i
A question regarding the tax status when an option is closed out by buying it back before expiration date. I believe that amount would be credited as a capital loss, if the underlying stock was not sold. Am i right on this assumption?
Thanks

Q: I will have to claim USA 10K profit in CDN dollars so my question is I already paid taxes on $10k. If I decide to convert all my USA holding to CDN dollars will I end up paying double taxes? Plus how do I calculate USA dollar cost on my profit?

Thanks for the 5i research - I have reduced my losses to almost zero.

Thanks for the great service.

Q: Hi 5i,
This is a request for ED and anyone else who has an opinion on foreign currency calculations on capital gains to go over to the “TAX FORUM” to get involved with the discussion.

Help out your fellow members and join in on any of the Forum discussions.

Thanks

Q: I am holding BEPC and BIPC in my non-registered account and BEP.UN and BIP.UN in my RRSP. A friend told me that there may be tax implications when holding LPs in and RRSP - is this true?
Thanks for your comments!

Q: Referring to what Ed is saying as accounting beefs on 4/1, with iTrade in the last couple of years they list all the stocks you have sold (Canadian and U.S.) and what you have paid for them (even if they were bought years ago - they have that info.) and they send a copy to the CRA and a copy to the customer. The commissions are already factored in, they are added onto a buy and subtracted from a sell. The tax accountant does not seem to have any trouble getting FX rate as I believe there is a blended rate available at tax time that can be used rather than having to backtrack to find the applicable rate of all stocks bought prior to 2020, etc.

Q: I hold DYNAMIC ACTIVE GLOBAL DIVID ETF UNITS (DXG) and the bank has sent me a T3 slip (Box 21) indicating I have earned $5384 as a capital gain. I didn't sell my ETF. I thought you report gain or loss only after you sell in a calendar year.

If I would have sold my ETF on Dec 22 my gain would be close to 10K how did they come up with only 5384.

I call my bank and they advise slip was generated "Non-cash distribution as part of the phantom payment." however I didn't receive any money.

Can you please advise do I have to report this gain or report when I actually sell the units?

I do my own Taxes. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks for the great service.

Q: I have a position in a stock. I recently sold a portion of the stock at a loss. I know the loss based on average cost has to be added back to the original average cost (making my cost higher) I bought the stock back again within the 30 day superficial loss rule. Question: If I sell the WHOLE POSTION by year end and have to declare a profit or loss, do I have to do anything at all as it " would all come out in the wash" This is for a non-registered acct. Thanks

Q: Re: CRA. Thanks for the chuckle Ed. Takes me back to the late 90's when I was trading US tech stocks. After a year of that, and doing the taxes, I saw the benefit of holding Canadian domiciled US stock ETF's

Q: Publish publicly in whole or part (or none) at your discretion, within the limits of what is appropriate for an investing advice service.
This is in response to Ed's tax/accounting beef of April 1.
I'm a retired tax accountant who served many investors who were plagued by this same situation.
I used to give my investment clients a little mini-editorial about it being the responsibility of the investor to have all that data, either prepared and kept by the investor themselves, or by someone else (which may have been the broker) the investor paid to prepare it for them. I developed a spreadsheet (which I used myself as well as making it available to my clients) to assist them in doing it for themselves if they so wished. Simple spreadsheet, usable in Excel or Google Sheets, which anyone comfortable with spreadsheets could replicate.
I'm happy to post the above, as well as a copy of the spreadsheet if that is possible, in the forums, though I note the most appropriate forum (Tax & FX issues) is now 5 years old. Perhaps a new forum topic, but I don't know how to start one?

Q: This is a tax / accounting beef, but it may apply to a lot of subscribers.

I'm doing my taxes on my own, and it is extremely time-consuming and frustrating when it comes to investments. CRA wants all the US numbers converted to CAD.

I have a US-based margin account to avoid the constant back and forth with losing money on exchange rates. I own relatively small amounts of many US stocks. Almost half of my tax time is related to accounting for stocks, looking up the original purchase date or settlement date, figuring out the US exchange rate (from the Internet) on that particular day, then adding to the cost base another day and a different US exchange rate when I added a few more shares to it, then subtracting that from the sell price with the sell date's foreign exchange rate. If that’s not enough, CRA wants us to include the commission in the cost base, but then the sell price needs to have the commission stripped out (with its US exchange rate calculated). What’s that all about?

I don’t know why the trading platform doesn’t figure all this out for you. Are there any smarter ways of doing this, other than switching brokerage accounts?

Q: As a retiree, I invest in mostly growth stocks with little or no dividends in my non-registered accounts so as to manage my net income to avoid government clawbacks and high tax brackets. In doing my research, how can I find out how distributions and dividends being paid by a company will be taxed in the hands of shareholders? Do dividends from specific classes of purchased stocks taxed differently?
More specifically, how are the distributions from BAM.A and BEP.UN treated, and are any of these or other Brookfield stocks considered return of capital?
Any recommended reading in this area?
Thanks for your ongoing sound support.

Q: if one sold 100 shares of company x out of a tax account and rebought the same shares in a tfsa account does the 30 day rule apply

Q: Are our subscriptions of 5iResearch eligible for the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit? The limit is $500.

John