pyFIFOtax

Simple Tax Reporting Tool for share transactions on foreign exchanges

Data Sources

A tax report is generated in an automated fashion based on two sources of inputs

• a history of transactions including deposits and sales of shares, dividend payments, currency conversions to EUR, and all relevant fees in the process (see example/transactions.xlsx for details)
• a history of all relevant exchange rates (eurofxref-hist.csv, based on official reference rates from EZB)

For the history of transactions, you don't have to bother about converting to EUR or matching the sell prices to the buy prices for instance. This is part of the automated reporting. Simply list the raw data.

For the reference rates, you might have to download a newer version depending on your report year. While it would be possible to have a variety of different foreign currencies based on this data, it is currently mainly intended in combination with USD.

ESPP and RSUs

Shares coming from ESPPs or RSU lapses can be treated differently. With ESPP often being sold directly after they are bought, it could actually reduce the reporting burden as one wouldn't expect capital gains from these transactions. If users want to do so, they should indicate the separate treatment by noting down the shares with a different symbol in all relevant transactions, e.g. by using NVDA-ESPP and NVDA-RSU instead of only NVDA. The reporting then will separate them in different calculations.

Report Generation

create_report.py will generate the report for you. Usage:

python3 create_report.py -dir <sub_dir of inputs/outputs> -f <file name of the transaction history> -y <report year> -o <output file name> -m <kind of exchange rates>

Note that the filenames should be valid Excel files, e.g. transactions.xlsx as input and report.xlsx as output.

For the reporting, you can choose conversion based on daily exchange rates (-m daily) or monthly averages (-m monthly_avg). Both should (no guarantee of correctness) be fine in terms of tax reporting. However, one should (no guarantee of correctness) be consistent across years. It might be just wise to choose it once and go for it in the following years. But note that it can actually make quite a difference.

The generated report will contain several sheets with details of the transactions matching sell and buy orders based on the FIFO principle and including the right conversion rates to EUR. The last sheet will contain a summary intended as guidance for ELSTER.

Conversion from CSV export

Various conversion utilities are available to convert the CSV output of the broker into a separate XLSX sheet.

Always inspect the results manually and copy only those values into the final spreadsheet which are verified.

Parameters:

positional arguments:
  {ibkr,schwab}         Type of the CSV format for input

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i CSV_FILENAME, --csv CSV_FILENAME
                        CSV file from Interactive Brokers or Schwab
  -o XLSX_FILENAME, --xlsx XLSX_FILENAME
                        Output XLSX file
  --ticker-to-isin, --no-ticker-to-isin
                        Replace tickers in the 'symbol' column to ISIN (only for IBKR)

Interactive Brokers

The following has to be done once on the IBKR web interface:

1. Go to Performance & Reports → Statements
2. Create a new Custom Statement
3. Specify "pyFIFOtax CSV export" as Statement Name
4. In Sections select All
5. In Section Configurations set all to No
6. Set Format to CSV, Period to Daily, and the language to English
7. Save it

Export the CSV file by running this newly created custom statement in the desired date range, then start the converter.py script with argument ibkr.

Always thoroughly examine the result.

By default, the "symbol" column contains the ticker name. If you'd like to see the ISIN there instead, use the --ticker-to-isin flag.

Note the following limitations:

• IBKR export format is very extensive, it's possible that some rows are not processed. Always verify the results
• Tax withholding calculation is not supported for dividends. Withheld tax will always be zero.

Schwab

Export the CSV in the desired date range from History > Transactions > Export.

Start the converter.py script with argument schwab.

Note the following limitations:

• Schwab CSV converter was not tested with a fully upgraded account
• The converter was not tested with more than one dividend and tax withholding row
• Currency conversions (if Schwab does it at all) are not supported

Further Use

Since all the reporting is done in a very simple and quite naive Python implementation, one could easily use it to augment the data in other ways. notebook_example.ipynb for instance shows you how to retrieve certain results as pd.DataFrame.

Requirements

• pandas
• XlsxWriter

Testing

If you develop a new feature or change an existing piece of code, test your changes with the following command:

PYTHONPATH=. pytest

Disclaimer

I am neither a lawyer nor a tax advisor. This is no tax advice. For me, this is a helpful tool. Feel free to use it but note that you should know what you are doing, and you are responsible for reporting your taxes correctly.