Deadline to track cost basis reporting looms

Broker-dealers, mutual fund companies and fund custodians are updating systems to comply with the cost basis reporting requirements included in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Brokers must begin reporting cost basis to the Internal Revenue Service and to taxpayers for trades beginning Jan.1, 2011; fund companies have until 2012 to comply. Custodians are not required to comply with the legislation, but they provide the technology as a service to their broker-dealer clients. For their part, wirehouses already track this data so the deadline is a non-issue for them. "The tech implications for cost basis are significant and if firms don't start now, they will never get it done in time," said Sean Cunniff, research director for brokerage and wealth management at Needham, Mass.-based TowerGroup. The aim is to guarantee full reporting of capital gains so the IRS receives its fair cut of investors' profits. Estimates from the Government Accountability Office and IRS put the amount of underreported capital gains at $7 billion to $11 billion per year.

REDUCED TAX BILLS

Ironically, because the technology allows for improvement of cost basis reporting, many advisers will be able to harvest losses more efficiently, reducing their clients' tax bills. Costs estimates for the enhancement range from $200,000 for a small, self-clearing broker-dealer to a multimillion-dollar expense for custodians, according to a participant who asked not to be identified. Systems within broker-dealers that require overhauls are the account transfer systems that interact with brokerage firms, as well as their order management systems. Historically, tracking cost basis has been a headache, a responsibility of investors who would have to dig through dusty old confirmations to determine the amount they paid for a stock or bond. For many firms, completing the fixes requires a multistep process that can frazzle the nerves of even the calmest, most experienced technologists. "This will take months just to scope out, and then you must build or buy a solution and integrate it with your current system," Mr. Cunniff said. "Then you test. Then you fix the bugs. Then you deliver." At Raymond James Financial Services of St. Petersburg, Fla., the battle to meet the deadline is under way. "We know it's a significant change and that's why we've started working on it already," said Josh Bohlander, senior manager in information technology. Hindering the project, however, are questions about how reporting should be done for wash sales, gifted securities, sales-load-basis deferral adjustments, and for fixed-income securities. "These are items not pinpointed in the current legislation," said Dale Skinner, a technology product manager with Raymond James. "We and the rest of the industry still need more clarification from the Internal Revenue Service on particular areas." Other firms are also waiting for the IRS to set a clear direction for the development effort. "We are still waiting for the IRS to make its final recommendations," said Teri Manton, a director in the product management and development group of Pershing LLC of Jersey City, N.J.
"We still need to know exactly what format the IRS wants us to report it in," said Marjorie Qualey, vice president of product development and technology at Schwab Institutional in San Francisco. In response, a spokesman for the IRS said it was "continuing to work on the issue." Rather than build the upgrade themselves, some companies are retaining third parties to provide the software, an approach that OppenheimerFunds Inc. of New York pursued. "Due to the complexity of building this into our own systems, we decided that it made more sense to partner with [GainsKeeper]" to build this enhancement, said Christine Polak, vice president of operations at the mutual fund company, who declined to disclose the cost of the software. GainsKeeper, a provider of cost basis and tax software, is a division of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services in Minneapolis. Over the next two years, Ms. Polak will collaborate with the vendor to provide clients with cost basis data, in the form of their choice. Under the legislation, clients can select the way they want to report cost basis data to the IRS, such as the average cost basis or on a first-in-first-out basis. Although earlier attempts to pass the cost basis rules failed, Pershing assumed that passage was inevitable and began working on the project, Ms. Polak said. "The whole idea of these regulations isn't new to us; we are very well-positioned and have been working closely with [the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association of New York and Washington] for several years now in planning for this legislation," said Ms. Manton. So far, the firm has developed a Form 1099 tax and year-end statement that breaks out gains and losses and addresses the bulk of the regulatory requirements, she said. Some broker-dealers, such as Cambridge Investment Research Inc. of Fairfield, Iowa, and Securities America Inc. of Omaha, Neb., receive cost basis information from their custodians, Pershing and National Financial Services LLC of Boston, respectively. E-mail Davis D. Janowski at djanowski@investmentnews.com.