Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

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grabiner
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Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by grabiner »

I received my Vanguard tax statement, and almost missed one key piece of information.

Near the end, there is a page, "Mutual Fund and UIT Supplemental Information", which identifies the portion of the dividends from each fund that are US Government obligations. This page lists my Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs, but not my non-Vanguard ETFs; Vanguard may not have this data. If you have any non-Vanguard ETFs that might hold some Treasury bonds, you need to look the Treasury information up on the provider's site.

But it also does not list my settlement fund. There is a footnote on a different part of the document for the settlement fund, and that footnote appears on a separate page, "2024 End Notes for account NNNNNNNN"; the footnote has the federal obligations percentage, which is 59.87%. With two-sided printing, I missed this page on the first reading.
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gotoparks
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by gotoparks »

Vanguard never reports gov't holdings on non-Vanguard funds or ETFs. It is up to the end user to figure it out.
UpperNwGuy
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by UpperNwGuy »

gotoparks wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:28 am Vanguard never reports gov't holdings on non-Vanguard funds or ETFs. It is up to the end user to figure it out.
And, unfortunately, the other fund providers don't make it easy to find this information on their websites. Fidelity, iShares, and Schwab are all more cumbersome than Vanguard, and State Street is the worst of all.
gotoparks
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by gotoparks »

UpperNwGuy wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:40 am
gotoparks wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:28 am Vanguard never reports gov't holdings on non-Vanguard funds or ETFs. It is up to the end user to figure it out.
And, unfortunately, the other fund providers don't make it easy to find this information on their websites. Fidelity, iShares, and Schwab are all more cumbersome than Vanguard, and State Street is the worst of all.
I had a little bit in SGOV and tried to find out the percentages and couldn't, so I gave up. I'm sticking with only VUSXX from now on.
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nps
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by nps »

gotoparks wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:48 am
UpperNwGuy wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:40 am

And, unfortunately, the other fund providers don't make it easy to find this information on their websites. Fidelity, iShares, and Schwab are all more cumbersome than Vanguard, and State Street is the worst of all.
I had a little bit in SGOV and tried to find out the percentages and couldn't, so I gave up. I'm sticking with only VUSXX from now on.
97.53%

It is in the documents section of the fund page

Direct link:

https://www.ishares.com/us/literature/s ... tamped.pdf
gotoparks
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by gotoparks »

nps wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 5:11 am
gotoparks wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:48 am

I had a little bit in SGOV and tried to find out the percentages and couldn't, so I gave up. I'm sticking with only VUSXX from now on.
97.53%

It is in the documents section of the fund page

Direct link:

https://www.ishares.com/us/literature/s ... tamped.pdf
Thanks, I just plugged it into my software.
Fired2020
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by Fired2020 »

I just looked @ my Vanguard 1099, I see the info there at the end of mine too. I've never noticed this in the past, I've always just referred to their separate disclosure each year (2024 US Government Obligations Income Information).

Funny that they would disclose the percentage on a 1099 and not simply hand you the $ amount as well.
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by grabiner »

Fired2020 wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 6:45 am I just looked @ my Vanguard 1099, I see the info there at the end of mine too. I've never noticed this in the past, I've always just referred to their separate disclosure each year (2024 US Government Obligations Income Information).

Funny that they would disclose the percentage on a 1099 and not simply hand you the $ amount as well.
It's particularly odd because they do have this breakdown for qualified dividends. If a fund has 40% qualified dividends, the statement says, "March 2024: Non-qualified dividend $300.00, qualified dividend $200.00", and the 40% will be the same for every month. But if it is a bond fund with 40% government interest, the statement just says, "March 2024: Non-qualified dividend $500.00".

The most noticeable distinction is that the qualified dividends are needed for your federal tax, while the government obligations are needed only for your state tax. Even the official forms often do not have state tax information; your 1099-DIV shows how much of your dividends is taxable at the normal rate, qualified, and federally tax-exempt, but not how much is taxable in your state.
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by surfinagin »

grabiner wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 8:29 pm I received my Vanguard tax statement, and almost missed one key piece of information.

Near the end, there is a page, "Mutual Fund and UIT Supplemental Information", which identifies the portion of the dividends from each fund that are US Government obligations. This page lists my Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs, but not my non-Vanguard ETFs; Vanguard may not have this data. If you have any non-Vanguard ETFs that might hold some Treasury bonds, you need to look the Treasury information up on the provider's site.

But it also does not list my settlement fund. There is a footnote on a different part of the document for the settlement fund, and that footnote appears on a separate page, "2024 End Notes for account NNNNNNNN"; the footnote has the federal obligations percentage, which is 59.87%.
With two-sided printing, I missed this page on the first reading.
Regarding bolded settlement fund comment-
Why is the U.S govt obligation percentage for settlement fund VMFXX provided in a separate "end note" instead of being listed with the other applicable funds/ETF's under "Mutual Fund and UIT Supplemental Information"-
Can anyone explain this?
plats
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by plats »

Thanks for that. Didn't notice it either. Wasn't there last year. Another thing is why can't TurboTax do the calculation?
stan1
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by stan1 »

plats wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:56 am Another thing is why can't TurboTax do the calculation?
Yeah, agree this would be nice. For my own records I have to build a spreadsheet then I retype the text into a supporting details box. Would be nice if the supporting details box had the ability to enter an amount, percentage to adjust by, and then calculate the total. Basically do a sum of product calculation for the table. Would help for USG interest as well as for foreign sourced income needed for foreign tax credit.
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by ncdcpa »

grabiner wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 8:09 am
Fired2020 wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 6:45 am I just looked @ my Vanguard 1099, I see the info there at the end of mine too. I've never noticed this in the past, I've always just referred to their separate disclosure each year (2024 US Government Obligations Income Information).

Funny that they would disclose the percentage on a 1099 and not simply hand you the $ amount as well.
It's particularly odd because they do have this breakdown for qualified dividends. If a fund has 40% qualified dividends, the statement says, "March 2024: Non-qualified dividend $300.00, qualified dividend $200.00", and the 40% will be the same for every month. But if it is a bond fund with 40% government interest, the statement just says, "March 2024: Non-qualified dividend $500.00".

The most noticeable distinction is that the qualified dividends are needed for your federal tax, while the government obligations are needed only for your state tax. Even the official forms often do not have state tax information; your 1099-DIV shows how much of your dividends is taxable at the normal rate, qualified, and federally tax-exempt, but not how much is taxable in your state.
I suspect that they have to give you the absolute number for qualified dividends because of the holding period requirement, so even though a certain percentage may potentially qualify, they have to have to look at whether the shares were held during the whole 121-day window around the ex-dividend date. If this understanding is correct, it raises an interesting question about the reporting of December dividends on 1099 forms by January 31.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p550#e ... k100010075
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by Van »

UpperNwGuy wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:40 am
gotoparks wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:28 am Vanguard never reports gov't holdings on non-Vanguard funds or ETFs. It is up to the end user to figure it out.
And, unfortunately, the other fund providers don't make it easy to find this information on their websites. Fidelity, iShares, and Schwab are all more cumbersome than Vanguard, and State Street is the worst of all.
Did you have any luck with State Street? If so, please share. I spent a lot of time looking for what % of tax-exempt income from MYMF for 2024 was earned in PA. I struck out.
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by sycamore »

plats wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:56 am Thanks for that. Didn't notice it either. Wasn't there last year. Another thing is why can't TurboTax do the calculation?
I don't work for TT or any other tax preparation company but I will speculate...

Reason #1 IIRC, when a tax prep software imports data from a custodian, the only data that's imported are in the main 1099 boxes. The data in Mutual Fund and UIT Supplemental Information is not included in the import. Lack of data in a standardized format is a big stumbling block. The brokerages haven't standardized on it, so tax prep software companies would have to gather and parse the data on their own. Yuck.

Reason #2 is that it's not their responsibility (Congress assigned responsibility to the taxpayer -- you and me) so why spend time & effort trying to figure out a problem that they're most likely to be blamed for if anything goes wrong? Put another way, how much would you pay them to do the work for you? Or pay the custodian?
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by sycamore »

Van wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 1:15 pm
UpperNwGuy wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:40 am

And, unfortunately, the other fund providers don't make it easy to find this information on their websites. Fidelity, iShares, and Schwab are all more cumbersome than Vanguard, and State Street is the worst of all.
Did you have any luck with State Street? If so, please share. I spent a lot of time looking for what % of tax-exempt income from MYMF for 2024 was earned in PA. I struck out.
Supposedly we could browse to https://www.ssga.com/us/en/individual
scroll down to Resources / Documents
click on "SPDR ICI Tax Summary (Primary)"
which is a link to https://www.ssga.com/us/en/individual/l ... imary.xlsx
Alas, that just yields a 404.
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by Van »

Sycamore, I had the same experience. Once you get to the end, there is a link to tell them the site is broken which I did. I was able to find the same tax data for ETFs on Invesco and BlackRock. StateStreet seems to be advisor/professional friendly, but not friendly toward individuals.
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by plats »

sycamore wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:03 pm
plats wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:56 am Thanks for that. Didn't notice it either. Wasn't there last year. Another thing is why can't TurboTax do the calculation?
I don't work for TT or any other tax preparation company but I will speculate...

Reason #1 IIRC, when a tax prep software imports data from a custodian, the only data that's imported are in the main 1099 boxes. The data in Mutual Fund and UIT Supplemental Information is not included in the import. Lack of data in a standardized format is a big stumbling block. The brokerages haven't standardized on it, so tax prep software companies would have to gather and parse the data on their own. Yuck.

Reason #2 is that it's not their responsibility (Congress assigned responsibility to the taxpayer -- you and me) so why spend time & effort trying to figure out a problem that they're most likely to be blamed for if anything goes wrong? Put another way, how much would you pay them to do the work for you? Or pay the custodian?
$5.00~$10.00.
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by sycamore »

sycamore wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:05 pm
Van wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 1:15 pm

Did you have any luck with State Street? If so, please share. I spent a lot of time looking for what % of tax-exempt income from MYMF for 2024 was earned in PA. I struck out.
Supposedly we could browse to https://www.ssga.com/us/en/individual
scroll down to Resources / Documents
click on "SPDR ICI Tax Summary (Primary)"
which is a link to https://www.ssga.com/us/en/individual/l ... imary.xlsx
Alas, that just yields a 404.
I checked today and now the Resources / Documents section doesn't even list the "SPDR ICI Tax Summary (Primary)" anymore.
Presumably State Street is at work on the new one and it'll show up soon.
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Re: Hidden tax data on Vanguard tax statement

Post by Van »

I hope you are correct, Sycamore. It's pretty ridiculous that a mega company like State Street can not make it simple and straightforward for holders of their ETFs to find the tax information needed.
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