Just renewed my siriusxm all access subscription. Last year i paid full price....first time ever. I guess i felt like throwing them a bone at the time. This year not so much....i played the cancellation game. Easy peasy
I have a bit of a tax riddle...
what at would you do if you were gifted stock that you could never figure out the cost basis of? I cant even make an educated guess, here is why. A family member of mine purchased stock xyz through his company (at a discount) from 1950-75 and then that company was split off over the years into 7 different companies. To make matters worse, the dividends were consistently reinvested.
what would you do?
Charles LaRocca
SiriusBuzz Founder
Charles -
I have these issues pop up every year for some of my clients. What I have done is get as much information on date(s) purchased. Then I take the high and low price of the day and take the average of that and multiply it by the amount of shares purchased. Then I would research the company's quarterly dividend payout per share each quarter and calculate from there. It sounds like you have a great deal of year's to sort out, so it may make sense to do a reasonable yearly calculation. Determine an average of how many shares bought per year and then figure out a price per share that would be reasonable. Then do the same type of calculation for the dividends. It sounds like you will never come to an exact answer, but if you have a reasonable calculation and support, you would have a decent chance vs. the IRS should this ever get audited.
After you come up with a cost of the shares, I would recommend reading IRS Publication 551 to determine your actual adjusted basis moving forward. There are different rules to determine your adjusted cost basis from there depending on if the FMV of the shares are higher or lower than the cost basis.
If you have any other questions shoot me a private message and we can talk. As an FYI, I have been a tax professional/CPA for over 11 years and I am a 50% in an accounting firm currently (2.5 years so far) so I can help you with this and/or other questions if you want to talk more.
Originally Posted by SiriusBuzz
Have orders in for 3.80 & 3.79...
I don't see why you think cable broad band and wifi could do major damage. You seem to forget that Verizon and AT&T have "major" wifi hotspots everywhere including 3G, 4G, etc blanketing the U.S. Cable companies don't even have cellular networks. Let's not forget that Sirius XM is a "satellite" music service.
I guess SIRI investors didn't like Apple's music news today.
Dish lost 134,000 subs last quarter. Cable has broadband, Sat TV does not. Major damage.
In Europe the cable companies are offering mobile wireless through MVNO deals and WiFi. Same should eventually happen in the US. A majority of US data on mobile is now being cosumed through Wifi. Anybody who thinks that Cable will not compete with the cellular companies with WiFi has no foresight at all. The 4 companies competing in cellular are having price wars as it is. What do you think happens when cable competes too? Whole new ballgame.
No it is not a music service. It is a RADIO service with music, sports, news, entertainment, comedy, weather and traffic. Streaming music services have not slowed Sirius' growth at all. And that will continue.
I was simply referring to "major damage." Providing data access via WiFi is nothing new. I would even bet the cable companies are playing catch up. What I find interesting is that at one point, AT&T (before SBC bought them out) was the largest provider of cable television in the United States. However, during the dot com bust and declining economy, they couldn't handle the debt load and ended up divesting these assets.
I would even say anybody who thinks AT&T and Verizon are not real competitors has no foresight.
You show me the forward growth rates in subs EBITDA and FCF in cellular and Sat TV. Cellular has not faced mobile wireless competition outside of the 4 companies until cable comes in which has not begun yet in the US It has in Europe already. Are you following? You tell me Sat TV's answer to cable's broadband.......I was simply referring to "major damage." Providing data access via WiFi is nothing new. I would even bet the cable companies are playing catch up. What I find interesting is that at one point, AT&T (before SBC bought them out) was the largest provider of cable television in the United States. However, during the dot com bust and declining economy, they couldn't handle the debt load and ended up divesting these assets.
I would even say anybody who thinks AT&T and Verizon are not real competitors has no foresight.
Thanks for for the advice man. To make things even more complicated he invested out of his pay on a weekly basis. The best hope I have is come up with some kind of yearly average.
would there possibly be any be any record of these transactions? For my sake or the IRS sake? As close family members we only have a story about how these stocks were obtained, how could the IRS ever possibly verify with actual records? Back when these shares were purchased people still held paper certificates.
we want to pay our fair share we just want to know, in the worst case scenario, what the IRS would show up with in the event of an audit.
i wish the shares were inherited, we would at least know the cost basis.
Charles LaRocca
SiriusBuzz Founder
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