Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What features does NetBasis offer?

Equity Cost Basis: Enter individual transactions for your stock, such as Buy, Sell, Sell All and Valuation.

Equity Historical Prices: Display unadjusted daily, monthly and annual pricing.

Equity Date of Death Values: Calculate the Fair Market Value of a position on both the date of death and the alternative valuation date (six months after the date of death).

Equity Gift Valuation: Determine the value of shares that have been gifted, as well as the cost basis if any or all of the shares were sold.

Equity Power Search: Calculate the original cost basis of shares if you know the current position.

Equity Corporate Action Look-up: View dividend action and non-dividend corporate events such as splits, spin-offs, name changes and mergers.

Mutual Fund Cost Basis: Enter individual transactions for your mutual fund.

Mutual Fund Historical Prices: Display unadjusted daily, monthly and annual pricing.

Mutual Fund Date of Death Values: Calculate the Fair Market Value of a position on both the date of death and the alternative valuation date (six months after the date of death).

Mutual Fund Gift Valuation: Determine the value of a mutual fund that has been gifted, as well as the cost basis if sold.

Mutual Fund Power Search: Calculate the original cost basis of shares if you know the current position.

Bond Price: Calculate the bond price on a given date.

Bond Date of Death Values: Calculate the Fair Market Value of a position on both the date of death and the alternative valuation date (six months after the date of death).

Q: What is a NetBasis transaction?

Equity/Mutual Fund Cost Basis: A transaction consists of entering any number of purchases and/or sales as well as any dividend information for one specific security. The result will provide you with the corporate actions events, dividend pricing, and number of shares owned, as well as total cash value and cost basis from the date of purchase through the sale/date of last upload.

Historical Prices: A transaction consists of entering one date and then choosing the unadjusted high/low/average of the day, month or year. The result will provide you with anywhere between 1 and 31 days of information.

Date of Death: A transaction consists of entering the number of shares as well as the date of death. The result will provide you with the price per share and the total amount the shares were worth on the date of death.

Gift Valuation: A transaction consists of entering the number of gifted shares, date of the gift, dividend information, and the donor's cost basis at the time of the gift. If the donor's cost basis is not known, the original purchase date as well as the security purchased is required.

Power Search: A transaction consists of entering the name of the security you are looking for the origin of, the number of shares currently owned/recently sold, the date you owned the shares previously entered, and the original purchase date. Then you will choose the origin security which the system has chosen based on the dates and information given. You must also enter any sales that have taken place since the initial purchase as well as any dividend information.

Corporate Action Look-Up: A transaction consists of choosing either a dividend or non-dividend list of corporate action events and entering the name of the security you would like to search.

Q: If I don't have the complete purchase date, can I still use NetBasis?

Yes. NetBasis allows you to enter a partial purchase date into the system. If all you have is the year or month and year but not the day of a purchase, you can enter that into the system and NetBasis will calculate an adjusted cost basis using the average of the high/low price for the year and/or month.

Q: My stock experienced splits and mergers. Do I need to know that information in order to use NetBasis?

No. NetBasis will automatically account for any corporate activity that happened while you owned your stock and adjust the cost basis and shares accordingly.

Q: What securities does NetBasis cover?

NetBasis covers the pricing of publicly traded stocks and mutual funds on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ exchanges going back as far as 1925 with corporate actions drawing back to 1962. It also provides some bond data, as well as data on some foreign stocks that trade on the US exchanges.

Q: I am getting a message that says "You may not have logged out of the application properly or someone has already logged into the system with the same user ID. Please try logging in at another time." Why?

When you log out of NetBasis, you must click "Logout" at the top right of your screen. If you just "x" out of the system or click your backspace key, a security feature may log you out. Simply log back in.

Q: Why did I get a message stating that a sale has been entered that exceeds the shares owned?

If it wasn't your intention to create a short sale, click "Cancel" and adjust your entries on the data input page to include only purchase information (no sales) and click "Calculate." The summary page will indicate the adjusted number of shares owned and the number of shares sold. See below issue on share amounts not matching your position.

Q: What should I do if my share amount doesn't match my position?

Check if you've entered in the correct date, number of shares and additional purchases and sales that were made. Also, if you reinvested dividends, check to see that you have the Dividend Reinvestment option selected. Minor differences might be due to rounding and are not considered material.

Yes. NetBasis will calculate your cost basis and provide per share or total pricing, sales proceeds, capital gains/losses, and adjusted number of shares. It will also adjust for corporate events and reinvested dividends.

Make sure the address you listed as your contact in NetBasis is the same as the billing address for the credit card you are trying to use. If they don't match, the card will be rejected.

Q: What kind of browser do I need to use?

NetBasis works best with Internet Explorer 7.0 or 8.0, but is also compatible with Firefox.

Q: When I search for a specific company, I sometimes see that there is more than one listing for the same company. Which one should I choose?

This situation occurs because NetBasis tracks not only events that affect cost basis, but also other important events in a company's history, such as name, ticker or CUSIP changes.

If you see more than one listing for the same company, it does not matter which you select for the purpose of calculating adjusted cost basis. The same string of corporate event history will be used. However, if there are various start and end dates listed for the same security, be sure the security you choose has a start date which is prior to your first purchase.

Q: Is the ticker of a mutual fund the same as the name of the fund?

No. A mutual fund ticker always consists of a string of 5 characters, ending in "X."

Q: Why is my cost basis higher than my original purchase price?

Whenever you reinvest dividends into the same fund or equity, you must add the amount of the dividends to the original cost per share to calculate cost basis. Since you have already paid tax on the dividends, you need to make sure your cost basis increases, so that you don't pay capital gains taxes on those dividends. Your fund or equity may have also experienced a reverse split that would have increased your per share cost basis since your number of shares were reduced due to that corporate action.

Q: Can I include a purchase for a parent company of a stock?

Multiple purchases and sales can be entered in one transaction; however, they must involve the same stock.