With the court ruling that a Demutualized Insurance Company's Stock, MetLife Inc., does have tax basis does anyone know a way to search Lacerte's database for clients who reported a sale to easily effect a filing of a Protective Claim until appeals are settled ?Thank you.
Best you could do would be to pull out anyone with a Sch D. That's simple enough to do with a filter. But no way to filter for a text string appearing on the D, no.
Here's the text of a post that I placed on TaxAlamanac explaining the procedures I used in ProSeries. I don't know whether they're the same or adaptable to Lacerte, but here they are for what they're worth:
I apologize in advance for the length of this post. It's in response to PB's request for procedures for isolating demutualization returns. Someone else may have a more sophisticated way of handling this, but these are the procedures I used.
First, these procedures only isolate the Schedule D returns in your ProSeries database. You then have to scan the returns to isolate those containing demutualization entries. However, this scanning takes only about 10 seconds per return.
In TY2007 ProSeries, in the Homebase View, click on Tools, Client Analyzer. Then select return type = 1040 Individual. Then select Has Capital Gains or Losses. then select Go. These steps isolate the Schedule D returns. For example, in my database, it isolated 90 returns out of a total of 753.
You then call up each return by doubleclicking on the name. Then hit F6, then the letter D. You then scan the Schedule D for any demutualization entries. These should stand out as ones with a Cost Basis of zero. If there are no demutualization entries, click on the Homebase icon, answer No to whether you wish to save the file, and go on to the next file. Once I fell into a routine, it was taking me under 10 seconds to check each file.
If you encounter a return with a demutualization entry, hit Control-T to call up the Tax Summary. Make note of the client's original tax liability which will include the tax on the demutualization "sale." Hit Escape to get rid of the Tax Summary window, change the demutualization basis to the same as the sales price, thereby zeroing out the demutualization "profit." Then look at the Tax Summary again and make note of the revised tax liability. The difference between this reduced liability and the original liability is, of course, the tax hit that the client incurred as a result of the demutualization "sale." All other things being equal, this would be the refund the client would be entitled to if he amends, and IF the IRS follows the Fisher decision.
The procedures in TY2006 and TY2005 ProSeries are a little more cumbersome since those years lacked the Client Analyzer feature. But this is how I worked around that.
In the Homebase view, select Homebase, then Column Headings. Scroll down slightly, and in the Available Columns window (on the left) highlight Capital Gain (Loss). Then select Add. This places Capital Gain (Loss) at the bottom of the stack in the right window. Highlight Capital Gain (Loss) in the right window, and keep clicking on Move Up until Capital Gain (Loss) is the second entry in the stack, just below the Client Name entry. Then click OK. You should now be back at the Homebase view, and the Capital Gain (Loss) column should be the 2nd column just to the right of the Client Name column. Now doubleclick on the Capital Gain (Loss) column heading. This will re-sort your Homebase view to place all of the Schedule D returns at the top of the stack. (They won't be in alphabetical order, but that doesn't matter.)
At this point, when you try to select the first return for viewing, you'll be presented with a "Save View Settings" box. Select "Save and rename these changes in a new view" and click OK. In the "Save View As" box, type in any name, such as "Cap Gns." (The name doesn't matter because you're going to delete this view in just a few minutes.) As soon as you click Save, you should be presented with the first return in the Homebase. Use the procedures above for scanning the Schedule D to isolate the demutualization returns.
Once you're done with this particular Homebase view, select any other view, such as "1040." Then select Homebase and on the dropdown list select Delete Tab. Highlight the Cap Gns view, select Delete, and answer Yes to the confirmation prompt.
