Fidelity Year End Tax statements DISCREPANCIES
 

Yes, the Fidelity year end tax statement detail does not agree to their monthly statements of distribution, and does not agree with the Royalty distributions statements from the two oil and gas company statements directly received from them.

And then Turbo tax can't keep the two different royalty company statements separate, I have entered them twice, and The Turbo Tax Schedule C isn't a direct entry but more of a rube goldberg set of questions.

The detail needed to file for public royalty trusts in the oil and gas industry is just rube goldbergish. . all this for a $37 royalty payment from one company which i owned for 15 days as a trade, which was supposed to be a long term hold.

So yes, turbo tax sucks for complex tax filings, and i am waiting to talk to fidelity to see what they say on Monday, as they have over $100 more in distributions than i actually received, and that the LP said i should have received

So yeah, you don't need a CPA to see the different amounts from two different sources, but why I hate accounting.

finance guy, not accounting guy, but we know the same things

Good on you that you caught those discrepancies. I am sure you don't want a letter from the IRS, an audit or having to file an amended return.

This made me chuckle. I got my MBA in Finance and my primary finance professor taught Michael Milken everything he knew. Someone asked him what the difference was between a finance and accounting major:

"If you ask an accounting major what two plus two is, he will answer, 'Four'. You ask a finance major, it'll be 'What do you want it to be?' " :1rotfl:

First mistake, Fidelity.

:1rotfl::1rotfl:

Made a customer care fidelity rep spend an hour plus on a saturday afternoon proving out that there is an issue, and it may be systemic. $72.15 higher on the 1099 MISC than the actual cash payments and external documentation. However, every month is wrong and more than one company is wrong, so its possible to be a systemic issue, which I told the very junior weekend warrior.

Yeah, I am a small time investor, but i make sure that all the numbers going into the tax return are correct on the revenue top line. . . . there is no allowance for discrepancies for income.

So if you have Fidelity and have Royalty payments from royalty trusts, please check your 1099 MISC versus the actual company supplied documentation.

And this time, first time, I took the turbo tax premiere audit defense as I am not thinking that fidelity will come back with corrected statements in time.

and yes, with finance, what number do you want the answer to be?

ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!

:bigbow:

:mademyday:

yeah, I know, but i have had it for so long, just lazy to move IRA and trust accounts to other brokerages. . .

They have offices so close to me either here or in FL, that i can just walk in and chat with them if I want to, or to quickly produce documentation, etc to get it processed.

finance guy

Yep. And he’ll offer to buy you dinner first.

Boomer

Way back in the 1960s I had a problem with Fidelity so I quit them. I refuse to use them to this day.

That said, it is not unusual for me to receive at least one amended 1099 from a brokerage.

Makes me happy just have an IRA with them. Wonder how they managed to screw this up.

Just because they made an error with this one individual of type of income doesn't mean everything else they do is bad. I check every year and all my data is 100% correct. I never had a problem with Fidelity. Top notch company in my opinion. It will be interesting to find out what caused the error. Was the income transmitted to them incorrect eventhough the statements to the client were correct?

Being in IT with database programming and finance with financial reporting and analysis for 30 years, I see more discrepancies in data that one would expect. . . flat out does not tie out errors. And its easy to happen with the amount of programming required to perform to the IRS standards at times. And there is always a first time for errors, so past history never guarantees future success. And if there was, such famous bankruptcies with audited statements should never have happened, correct?

at my current company, there are millions in accounting adjustments in revenue after the reported revenue to the street, by the auditors. A friend of mine was a very high level controller at GE, and he would tell me how they would correct accounting errors if they weren't in the company's best interest, but if the error showed more favorable, nothing would be corrected. . . and yes, the revenue at GE was cooked as two different friends of mine inside the company related to me.

finance guy, who checks on the accounting guys to be sure they are correct.

I agree, why post before having all the answers. I await the response tomorrow.

Would have thought the auditors would pick up on this at some point.

A former GE finance guy here too. My favorite tactic at GE was when a vendor offered an early payment discount, GE would pay it late and take the discount too. Don't remember any of those vendors complaining (usually small guys who couldn't afford to take on GE). Sad.

Companies like GE would demand 90 day terms so that their vendors could finance their business at no cost to GE.

Whirlpool purchased one of my customers some years ago and demanded 90 day terms and a 10% discount because they were Whirlpool. Fortunately for me was able to wave bye bye.

What is the point? Fidelity, SATURDAY, "jr. staff person," esoteric problem. The other brokerages are mon-fri 9-5. There is a contact person on your account. You can bet a difference between the Fidelity statement and the tax you pay will result in an inquiry, AN AUDIT, by the IRS.

Fair is a concept. Reality is what is. A small customer, you owe us five dollars and twenty cents and we are no shipping your order till you pay it. A big customer, who is say 20% of your total sales. Check lost in the mail, ok send me another one. I've asked customers how it is the post office looses checks but bills always seem to arrive on time.

Similar reason why I recommended it’s not worth the hassle to invest in ETF’s in a taxable account.

There’s another big difference between the two professions, which is pay. That’s why I decided to get my MBA in Finance and Economics rather than accounting. Bean counters are a dime a dozen and are required to think systematically, not creatively. Therefore their earnings upside is capped. Finance professionals are constantly challenged to find undiscovered ways to creatively add value and earnings potential is almost unlimited if they are good at what they do.

Suggestion-I think it is a plus that Fidelity is opened on Saturday and you can reach a HUMAN 24 hours a day seven days a week. However, with complex issues it is wise to use normal mon-fri 9-5 when more staff is available.

As far as finance,"What do you want the number to be," perhaps the question is what will the IRS accept. Our tax code is ONLY 180,000 pages.

Just an update finally:

1) i got incomplete tax statements in the mail the first time around
2) i got a second tax statement in the mail that said "There are no changes to the first tax statement"
3) I found the correct tax statement on line, downloaded it, and it was changed from the prior year's format, so I misread the statement. ie, they put the information from the income statement distributed from the oil and gas trust in the filing on the next to last page, and the distributions to my account on the last page. (never before had they put the Oil and Gas revenue prior to distributions on my account tax statement, and I read it as my distributions, which was my miss reading. ie they are trying to be everything to me by including non distribution information, Little Miss helpful, but they could NOT perform points 1 and 2 correctly.)

Admission:
I was so irritated on points 1 and 2 that I wasn't correctly reading on point 3 with the little time remaining to file.

So 66% Fidelity at fault for the first two points
I am 33% at fault for the third point

In my advancing age, i get more easily irritated at professionals who underperform
and to whom I am paying money.

yes, I am human.

You received the final correct information but somehow Fidelity is 66% at fault for your misreading the documents? That’s priceless logic.

Yea that's why many of us vendors stopped that practice and switched to discounts given upon the receipt of pre pay. Never extend terms to a company who you know will not honor an agreement.

Your comment is self-important about finance degrees, I got my accounting degree a long time ago. I've been the CFO of two public companies and the President of a cruise line. I got the jobs by thinking outside of the box using my background.

I've been in private practice as a CPA for 31 years now. Most "bean counters" as you call us are keyed upon giving the best tax advice we can but also consult and advise on matters of sales, expansion, pricing, equipment acquisition , mergers and acquisitions, buy sell agreements, retirement planning, etc. Not just "bean counters"!

On the subject the original poster brought up the problem Fidelity has and the other investments advisors have is they are waiting on information from the companies you invest in as to how "dividends" are broken up - into ordinary dividends, qualified dividends, Sec 1231 dividends, return of capital, non taxable dividends. This breakdown can change depending their own year end financial statements which aren't completed until months after 12/31/xx. They're a pain because returns are prepared based upon broker's preliminary tax statements and the returns cannot be filed because we have to wait and see if there are revisions. In years before 2021 we got two revisions to some of the original statements.

Likely we can blame this ALL on the ever changing tax laws coming out of the Deep State.

I think you can blame ALL of this on some old guy whose is past his prime that didn’t wait for his final information documents to be delivered. So he went on a crusade to prove he is still relevant to TOTV readers and some poor Fidelity customer service rep working the weekend shift. The movie Secondhand Lions comes to mind after reading this thread.

not great comprehension as there wasn't one coming in the mail, which would have the correct information, which was the point of the irritation of mailed document two which did not contain the missing information from the first document, but said there were no changes.

Accurately, the final information was available in early April.

Small comprehension issue with uncommon tax situations, but that's ok. .

the only correct interpretation you made from reading the post,

:beer3:

If i had the means to have health insurance and not care for an elderly parent, I might just be living there and golfing everyday, and not filing any tax statements.

:a040:

yes, but managing corporate finances is way different than managing a portfolio of unlimited choices against a benchmark of a frictionless index. Most accountants I have worked don't have the intuitive business valuation of a good decision or poor decision. They know the processes and legal requirements.

They advise, but don't decide. they know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing. . .

And we can debate this all day long, and neither of us will change our opinions.

The future is much more uncertain that the past accounting.