"ed" <ed[at]edcosoft.com> wrote:

- quote -

Thanks for your thoughts. They happen to match mine pretty
closely. The IRS instructions are not overly helpful
because they just say that for a PTP that you disposed of
you should just enter the gains and losses on the forms you
normally use. Having received a 1099-B covering the two
items in question, my normal inclination would be to just
enter them on Schedule D after adjusting my basis downward
to reflect the distributions I received. That would
accurately reflect what I actually realized even though it
wouldn't show the artificial allocations from the
partnership.

As to tax programs, TaxCut asks you if the K-1 is for a
Publicly Traded Partnership, and if you answer yes, it tells
you it doesn't handle those and you will have to make manual
changes.

I actually spent a fair amount of time this weekend tracking
every entry from the K-1 to where it goes on every IRS
Form/Schedule. I had to fake out TaxCut in a few places to
make the numbers go to the right places without doing an
override, but everything appears to calculate pretty closely
to what it should. There are a few items that seem counter
to what one would intuitively believe, but I attribute that
to strangeness in the IRS rules.

I am going to finish calculating the return computed both
ways this evening. Hopefully, there will not be a big
difference between the two methods.

BTW, both PTPs are energy related.

Regards, Dan

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"DF2" <replyvia[at]newsgroup_please.com> wrote:
- quote -

Thanks for the input. I had already been to the pages of
both partnerships because they didn't include the nice
fold-out showing where each entry went. Unfortunately,
neither web page had any info.

Regards, Dan

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"d.l.schumacher" <d.l.schumacher[at]worldnet.att.net> wrote:

- quote -

sounds like its time for you to get a CPA with tax
experience & knowledge your big hint is that your "CPA
daughter" knows enough to stay clear of these things

--
<<< Benjamin Yazersky CPA [NJ & NY] > > ---> real address on hobokenx or hobokeni <---


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d.l.schumacher wrote:

- quote -

By "this year" you mean 2004 I assume.

- quote -

If these partnerships are listed at
http://www.ptpcoalition.org/CoalitionMembersList.htm the
effort may be less than you think. For most of the PTPs they
show what goes on what forms.

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Virtually all tax programs handle all those form, or at
worst you complete them and punch the numbers into a form
they do calculate. There is no special program for it.

Personally, and not officially,. if you bought and sold in
one year. deduct any cash distribution you got, and the
original cost from the net price you got for selling them.
If it is plus put it on line 21 unless you got a 1099B. If
you got a 1099B, or if it was a loss, put the cost less any
cash distributions you got on Schedule D, Short term as the
purchase price and what you received in selling as the sales
price and continue the form. Ignore Schedule E and all the
other forms, except any CREDIT, which you put on the correct
1040 line for that credit.

If that doesn't work, (who knows, you didn't give us enough
infomration to know what kind of LLP it is) come back with
why not.

ed

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After 40+ years of having no problems doing my taxes
(starting with simple pencil and paper, and then moving to
calculator, spreadsheets, Turbo Tax, and now Tax Cut) I am
going crazy trying to figure out how to do the forms for two
Publicly Traded Limited Partnerships that my broker had me
invest in this year, both of which were sold during the year

I can understand the need to adjust my basis to account for
the two cash distributions, but trying to allocate all of
the other entries on the two K-1 forms (ranging from two
"losses" of $-315 and $-1115 and a few "gains" of $1-83) to
half a dozen forms has me pulling my hair out. Manually
determining all the correct entries, and then doing an
override in TaxCut is not intuitively obvious. My CPA
daughter doesn't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole
because she doesn't even do her own taxes.

I realize that working through all the forms with the
artificial losses seems like it might reduce my taxable
income by a relatively small amount, but at this point I
would be perfectly happy to report my sales proceeds minus
my purchase cost (adjusted for the cash distributions) as my
gain or loss.

If I were to just adjust my basis on the capital gains and
losses input form to account for the cash distributions, and
ignore all the other forms, how upset would the folks at the
IRS be? After all it seems like I would be giving up some
legitimate negative adjustments to income.

Regards, Dan

P.S. This is what was behind my previous request for info
on tax programs that easily handled Publicly Traded
Partnerships. From all my Google searches and reviewing the
specifications of tax programs, I couldn't find anything
that seemed to do this that didn't cost a small fortune.

P.P.S This getting old is for the birds!

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