Neal

[neallove]

Taxpayer 83 years old sold Honeywell stock for $380,000

Does not have any idea cost basis. He started investing in the 1970's as a payroll deduction.

Honeywell just gives us the run around.

How can I find the cost basis of the stock. Dividends each year were used to purchase more stock.

[Koss]

Stock Prices

You'll have to come up with some sort of model for estimating the basis. Maybe you already understand this. It all depends on how much he was investing each pay period. The reinvested dividends make it more complicated. Stretching over thirty years or so, little variables can add up to a big difference. Like, was he getting paid once a week, every two weeks, or twice a month?

Yahoo Finance has historical prices for Honeywell going back to 1970, together with dividend data. The data can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet in .csv format.

It's going to take some work, but you might be able to write a reiterating formula in Excel that will calculate the basis for you... Once you determine the variables I mentioned above.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=HON&a=00&b=2&c=1970&d=03&e=5&f=2011&g=m

BMK

[erchess]

Possible Link

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/historical/default.asp

I found this link in a quick search of old posts. It may help. Good luck to you.

Ok once again I am slow. Burton has provided another link and since it does go back far enough I think you should use it. His idea of an excel sheet is a good one if you use excel. I didn't think of it since I don't know how to use excel for anything that complicated. I think what I would do in your situation is take the excel sheet by appointment to a buddy who does know how and buy him lunch in exchange for him writing the formula.

[geekgirldany]

Here is a person that has an image of an excel worksheet he setup to track his.

http://directstockpurchase.blogspot.com/2008/03/cost-basis-calculator.html

Maybe that will help in setting up excel to figure the cost.

[FEDUKE404]

And now for the hard part....

Taxpayer 83 years old sold Honeywell stock for $380,000

Does not have any idea cost basis. He started investing in the 1970's as a payroll deduction.

Honeywell just gives us the run around.

How can I find the cost basis of the stock. Dividends each year were used to purchase more stock.

You cannot realistically expect the corporation to keep cost basis records for stock purchased up to 40 years ago.... Perhaps the transfer agent, but I doubt it.

To come up with anything other than an educated guess is going to be extremely difficult, especially the first week in April. How much did he purchase and how frequently did he purchase the stock through payroll deduction? I assume he probably was also in their DRIP program?

Getting a "historical" price is the least of your problems. Yahoo does as well as anything. Don't forget there are two 2:1 splits as well as a 3:2 split to factor into the equation.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=HON+Basic+Chart&t=my .....graph

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=HON+Historical+Prices .....prices from 1970 to present

You may also be able to glean some purchases via old tax returns, i.e. those made with quarterly dividend payments. But tracking the payroll purchases is likely not possible.

Good luck!