When I was filling out my income tax in 2010, I noticed that my
entire capital gains and losses was due to one stock, Geocaching
Puzzle Solver (Symbol:GPS). I had acquired and sold GPS many times
and obtained shares from several sources. As I sold shares of GPS,
I did not designate to my brokers which particular shares I was
selling. Therefore I had to use the First In First Out Method
(FIFO). In order to alleviate some of the confusion of tracking the
many bought and sold transactions I created the following table
below. Respectively, the columns represent the date I acquired GPS,
where I acquired the GPS or who I sold it to, the number of shares
of GPS acquired or sold, the net price per share of GPS I acquired
or sold the GPS for the date of the transaction, and historical
notes to help track the costs involved.
When I had finished filling out Schedule D to the nearest penny,
remarkably I observed that one of the lines of the form had a seven
digit number beginning with 29 and another line had a seven digit
number beginning with 95 just like a set of coordinates. I took
that highly coincidental information to place a cache at the spot
indicated by the numbers. Unless you carry all the IRS rules in
your head, the useful IRS Web Site is www.irs.gov.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on
Geochecker.com.