#76 Leap Year Bug in Cap Gain Holding Period

[Norman Leet]

There is rare buy/sell date combination for which OTS generates an
incorrect Capital Gains Holding Period.
Example:
Buy Date 2-28-2015
Sell Date 2-29-2016 (2016 is a Leap Year)
IRS verbiage on the holding period is to start counting the day
following the purchase date, which would be 3-01-2015
(not a leap year). The 1 year holding period occurs on the
day preceeding 3-01-2016 (i.e. one calendar year), which
is 2-29-2016 (a leap year). So, the above Buy/Sell Date combination
is a holding period of one year, and it is a short term gain.
OTS reports this date combination as a Long Term Gain.
If anyone with commercial tax prep software can validate the above dates
as a short term gain, it would help to confirm my observation.

Attached Files:
OTS_Leap_Year_Problem.pdf   -  Problem description and fix
US_Fed_1040_leap.txt  -  OTS input file to demonstrate the leap year problem
taxsolve_US_1040_2018.pdf  - Annotated Source Code Changes
taxsolve_routines.pdf    - Annotated Source Code Changes
US_Fed_1040_chk.txt - OTS input file to check new code 
US_Fed_1040_Bad_Date_chk.txt - OTS input file to demo enhanced Bad Date Error Message   
taxsolve_US_1040_2018.diff - diff file is against OTS r43
taxsolve_routines.diff     - diff file is against OTS r43

    Refs:

https://certent.com/tax-holding-periods-and-leap-year/
https://www.naspp.com/blog/2016/03/tax-holding-periods-and-leap-year

-Norm Leet

[John Morgan]

The work around is to close the stock market every February 29. : -)

[Aston Roberts]

Fixed accepted and incorporated in upcoming update.
Thanks!
-- Aston