Well it's heck on earth time again. That's right taxes. It's not that I owe, probably not. No, it's worse than that, it's the sheer infinite insolvable complexity of the whole thing. Schedule D has gotten worse - more complex.

So suppose you have a taxable fund that reinvests dividends/capital gains etc. on a regular basis. It realistically becomes near impossible to determine the date of aquisition, when all these little piddly aquisitions (reinvestments) are going on all the time (or not all the time, but if you hold a fund for awhile ...). Now this used to be easily handled under schedule D by using an average cost basis and listing "various" as the date of aquistion (this may not be tax saving optimized but it is simplicity). But apparently "various" is no longer allowed (at least in tax software). So ..... sigh. And *this* isn't even tax complexity. I've had complex taxes this is just a very ordinary thing if you have a taxable fund that reinvests.

But still, I need some kind of long term solution to my tax problem. Possible solutions:
1) don't hold anything beyond bank accounts in taxable accounts. Only put anything else in IRAs, 401ks. Ok but this solution is stupid. It's locking the money up for what seems like forever not EVEN to save taxes, just because the complexity of taxes is driving me batty
2) don't have anything beyond bank accounts in taxable funds reinvest - instead have them cut dividend checks or whatever. I could accept this solution. It seems a really stupid choice just to have to make because taxes are so complex though
3) figure out some method by which tax reporting becomes straightforward for this. I.e. maybe if I used LIFO or FIFO, date of aquistions would show on broker forms and all would be happy. I don't know if that's true or not. I suppose I'd have to research it. Not a bad solution. Haha, I'm not even trying to minimize taxes here, I mean yes sure if I could do so without complexity I'd want to, but I'm mostly trying to minimize complexity - because the situation is bad
4) Always pay accountants to do my taxes and beg for mercy. Ok this seems like a great solution, right? The problem is if I'm struggling because the data is not on the forms, maybe they would too. I mean they know much more about taxes than me, so maybe they know a way out, that's like duh that I just don't see, but even tax accountants struggle with missing data *sometimes*.

They had to go and make taxes even more complex!