Fiscal year end estate - easiest way to calulate brokerage

Hey all,

Had a client with a parents estate. We went with the 645 election, and a 7/31/2020 year end.

The estate holds several brokerage accounts, all have been liquidated. From your experience...
1) What is the easiest way to prepare the Schedule D, calculate gain/loss?
2) What about dividends? I could go with the cumulative dividend amount shown on the 7/31 statement, but that won't tell me qualified dividends.

Obviously there is no 1099 brokerage statement to tie into, so this doesn't seem like its going to be a simple task

Any and all insights appreciated.

Thanks!

You go through each of the monthly statements and pull the transactions for Schedule D.
For dividends, look at the 1099 for the prior year year 1040 to get an indication of what would be qualified dividends. It's generally easy if it's stock. Not so easy if mutual funds. Make a good faith estimate.
The 2020 1099 for the calendar year should be available. You can look at that and back in/back out for qualified divs.

I almost always extend these to wait on the 1099's. Otherwise you won't be able to differentiate between dividends and non-taxable distributions, 199A dividends, ptp sales, etc.

If the brokerage is not willing to supply the detail necessary, you will have to wait for the 1099 at the end of the year. The summary should be followed by detail of each payment, which allows you to do the math.

The brokerage has the information, but most can't be bothered to respond to these inquires. Been there, done that, cussed several.

sjrcpa, HowardS, taxcpa

Thanks for the input, and I appreciate you taking the time to reply. You all pretty much verified exactly what I was thinking. Made it easier to explain to the client why extending is the best bet.