Author Topic: Contributions vs Gains in Vanguard Roth IRA  (Read 2668 times)

BayAreaFrugal

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Contributions vs Gains in Vanguard Roth IRA
« on: March 14, 2017, 01:30:19 PM »
Is there a simple way to view what portion of your Vanguard Roth IRA is contributions vs gains? Seems like this would be a basic feature for a Roth IRA account, but I can't find it anywhere.

Eric

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Re: Contributions vs Gains in Vanguard Roth IRA
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2017, 01:34:32 PM »
Click on your IRA.  Go to your Transaction History.  Expand the timeframe.  Filter by "Buy" in transaction types.

BayAreaFrugal

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Re: Contributions vs Gains in Vanguard Roth IRA
« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2017, 01:54:05 PM »
In my younger days of trying to be a more active investor I moved money around a few times within my IRA, which makes the transaction history quite confusing. For instance, moving money from an index fund into an individual stock involved "exchanging" money into a money market fund and then "buying" the individual stock, so if I just look at the "buys" in the transaction history, that money would be counted twice - once when I originally bought the index fund, and again when I bought the individual stock.

Proud Foot

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Re: Contributions vs Gains in Vanguard Roth IRA
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2017, 03:56:37 PM »
Do what Eric said only look for a transaction type that is adding new money to the account.  This could be "Conversion", "Rollover", "Contribution", etc.  I am assuming you want to know what you contributed to the account rather than the cost of your investment purchase?

BayAreaFrugal

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Re: Contributions vs Gains in Vanguard Roth IRA
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2017, 04:23:41 PM »
There's no way I see to filter out just the contributions that added new money to the IRA vs the example I gave above. I mean, I can go through all the transactions and manually add up the ones that were actually adding new money to the account, but I worry that it's error prone. Surely Vanguard must have a mechanism to keep track of how much of my balance is contributions vs gains so if I make a withdrawal they know whether it should be subject to tax + penalty, right?

secondcor521

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Re: Contributions vs Gains in Vanguard Roth IRA
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2017, 07:28:25 PM »
There's no way I see to filter out just the contributions that added new money to the IRA vs the example I gave above. I mean, I can go through all the transactions and manually add up the ones that were actually adding new money to the account, but I worry that it's error prone. Surely Vanguard must have a mechanism to keep track of how much of my balance is contributions vs gains so if I make a withdrawal they know whether it should be subject to tax + penalty, right?

Nope.  As the owner of the IRA, it is your responsibility, not Vanguard's.  They'll be nice and help you, since you're a customer, but you're the one responsible for figuring your taxes, not them.

As long as you keep accurate contemporary written records, I think you can do it any way you want to, but the canonical way would be to add up the numbers in box 10 of the 5498 forms that Vanguard sends you each year (and you are keeping for your records).

Sorry, I may be coming across as a little snarky because I am tired and have a headache.  But at least I gave you information... :-{

wahhunglee

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Re: Contributions vs Gains in Vanguard Roth IRA
« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2017, 07:30:56 PM »
Lea,  have you tried to contact vanguard?  Their customer service is great and they can look at your account perhaps to get the reporting you are looking for.
Best