Personal Investments • cost basis on mixed of covered and non-covered gifted shares

Simplified hypothetical cost basis information (for the Vanguard fund shares that were gifted to you few years ago) that Vanguard provides:
................ ................... Quantity ....... cost per share ...... total cost....... market value
Non-covered shares ................. 1000 ............. 5 ............... 5000 .......... 15000
Covered shares ...................... 300 ............. 10 ................ 3000 ........ ... 6000

Questions:
1. When you are selling these shares, do you need any additional information from the giftor?
2. Prior to gifting the shares to you, if the giftor ever sold any shares in the fund using a particular cost basis method (AvgCost, FIFO, etc), must you now used the same method (he used) when you are selling the shares (especially the non-covered ones)? Or can you choose a different cost basis method?
3. When you try to sell the shares, Vanguard is asking to choose a cost basis method among 5 choices: mintax, hifo, fifo, specID, avgCost (default method). Given that these are gifted shares and thus you don't have records other than what Vanguard provides, which method will be the easiest to sell the shares?
4. Covered shares have a significantly higher cost per share than the non-covered ones? Is it possible to sell off all covered shares now and sell the non-covered ones later? Or vice versa?

Statistics: Posted by Bobbob — Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:12 am — Replies 1 — Views 69

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