How can I calculate my capital gains for a stock?
How can I calculate my capital gains for a stock?
user
To compute your capital gains on your stocks, you’ll need to know what your basis (the amount you paid for the stock) and your selling price were.  You can estimate your basis by checking your brokerage statements and tax returns to see when you bought the stock.  Once you have that, you can use the calculator provided by the IRS to calculate your capital gains, assuming that your selling price wasn’t lower than the basis.  Here’s an example of how that might look.
assistant
Okay. Can you explain how to do the calculation using my buy and sell information.
user
Let’s suppose that on February 1, you bought 100 shares of APPLE stock at $63 per share.  The next day you sold those 100 shares at $77.  You want to know your capital gains for this transaction, and for this we need to use the instructions from the IRS to do the calculation.
assistant
Okay. Do you know any formulas I can use to caluculate it?
user