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To: Alski who wrote (9071)	6/19/1999 8:56:00 AM
From: SJS	Respond to of 14427

Now Alski, that WAS helpful. I'm serious. It was. But do you know how crazy it is to adjust the basis of 1 transaction from another or multiple others, especially for LT gains/loss base transactions? You'd soon forget about the single or MULTIPLE calls, straddles and hedges (which are ALL ST transactions) you've written against the stock over the years, and your original transaction receipts would be of NO help in understand 10 years later why your basis was so low.........!!! No investment tracking software does this to my knowledge (certainly not Quicken), so I have records of buys and sells with original receipts that will matchup perfectly and theoretically come to the EXACT same mathematical results as the IRS way. I guess that's all that matters: One pays the correct tax. Or does it? I'll talk to my tax guy. How do other folks here do this? Steve

To: Alski who wrote (9071)	6/19/1999 10:47:00 AM
From: Thean	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14427

Alski, didn't realize you've got more tax info than I would normally asked for. I'm going to bookmark your IRS publication and use that as a reference. As for me, last year was the first year where my option transactions really became complicated. I had all sorts of scenarios and I decided to do it Steve's way - handling each round-trip trade individually and not add/subtract the cost basis/proceeds of the share transaction. I figured if I do it wrong, I should be able to defend myself in front of IRS tax auditor that 1) I'm new to this and still learning, 2) The bottom line matches so I'm not paying a penny less than I should according to the law. I filed my tax on April 15 and have yet to hear from them. Keeping my fingers crossed. As to subsequent year, I'm still not sure if I should use my existing approach or the correct approach (more complicated) as outline by Alski. On a different note - I had a June 22 1/2 call expired yesterday. The stock closed at 22 11/16. When I called Waterhouse 6 months ago asking about their policy in assignment, they said 1/4 pt is the cutoff. Therefore if this guideline of theirs still hold, I will not be called on Monday morning. But I'm not sure. Has anyone had cases this close before?