Bulk Delete Dividends

If your importing a portfolio, particularly from an estate, there maybe periods where the dividend is not relevant to that portfolio and you need to delete it…

Background… if you receive shares through a will if they were purchased by the testor (the person who died) before 9/1985 (pre-CGT) they are transferred to you at Date of Death valuation. if they were purchased post CGT they are transferred to you at the DATE OF PURCHASE … of course in this case you could pick up 20 years of dividends you don’t want…

A worked example

  • date of purchase 30/6/1982 (pre CGT) Parcel A
  • date of purchase 15/1/1986 (post CGT) Parcel B
  • date of death 3/8/2018
  • presume 2 dividends per year March and Sept
  • Probate granted 31/12/2018
  • Date of transfer from estate to beneficiary 2/2/2019

Parcel A is transferred to the beneficiary after probate on 2/2/2019. The purchase date is the Date of Death ( 3/8/2018) and the 1 dividend Sept 2018 is removed as it belongs to the estate.

Parcel B - The shares are transferred on 2/2/2019 and recorded as being purchased on 15/1/1986. The Dividends from 15/1/1986 till 3/8/2018; 63 in total, are for the testor (the person who died) on their tax return so to this portfolio are irrelevant and need to be deleted.

Both Parcel A and Parcel B will have the 1 dividend Sept 2018 (between date of death and data of transfer from estate) this needs to be deleted as well as it belongs in the estate tax return…

Dividends from March 2019 are relevant to this portfolio for both parcel A and parcel B.

While there is a current button to confirm all or you can confirm the dividend - the delete story is not as attractive.

To delete a dividend it you have to find it and then go into the dividend and then select delete and its gone…The problem is then you end up on page 1 of the list of dividends and often its the early ones you need to delete.

As you can see from the process it’s also one at a time. Or in the worked example 64 times… Not ideal!

Could we either have either

Option A) a confirm, edit, delete button added … You might want to put delete in the middle or add a confirmation that you want to delete it … This will still be single processing but if you remain on the page rather than returning to page 1 it will be acceptably fast enough.

Option B) a bulk delete where you can then select the entries you want to delete perhaps a page a time. My vision is press bulk delete and you get a selection box on the left side you can then “tick” the ones for deleting and press confirm at the end. Perhaps with a confirmation message you are about to delete x dividends … do you want to proceed? This will be faster even if you return to page 1 at the end of processing. This would be my preferred option.

as a couple of alternative processing methods.

Why this becomes important… The bottom end of the baby boomers (1946-1964) are about to be 60 (while the top end are 76). We are about to enter a period of intergenerational wealth transfer and estates, trusts etc will become more common as people will want to manage the CGT side. Estate trusts last for 79 years from the date of death. That becomes quite flexible to manage the CGT obligations.

If you sell the asset in the estate before transfer to the beneficiary the estate pays the capital gains tax. If you transfer the asset then the capital gains tax is paid when the beneficiary sells the asset. Which is why I think you will see a lot more of this kind of activity and this feature could be useful.