The complicated corporate history of AT&T causes many shareholders to throw up their hands in frustration at the thought of calculating their cost basis.
Some investors even decide to hold their AT&T shares (and all the spinoffs) rather than deal with the accounting nightmare.
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If you own or owned any of the following securities and don't remember where you got them, your holdings may have originated from ownership of shares of the original American Telephone & Telegraph Co (not to be confused with the current AT&T Inc. which is the former SBC Communications.)
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Airtouch Communications A T & T Broadband A T & T Corp. A T & T Inc. A T & T Wireless Services, Inc. Ameritech (became SBC then AT&T) Bell Atlantic (became Verizon) BellSouth Corp. Comcast Corp. Fairpoint Communications (Verizon spinoff)
| Idearc (Verizon spinoff) Lucent Technologies MediaOne Group NCR Corp. Nynex (became Verizon) Pacific Telesis SBC Communications Inc. (became AT&T Inc.) Southern New England Telecommunications Southwestern Bell (became SBC Comm.) Teradata Corp (NCR spinoff) US West (became Qwest)
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If you owned shares of the original American Telephone & Telegraph before the January 1, 1984 breakup, use our split-up calculator to calculate your cost basis allocations to each of the "Baby Bell" stocks you received. Just click on the picture to access the calculator.
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Split-up calculator |
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The AT&T Investor Relations website can guide you through the various corporate reorganization events for AT&T, the most widely-held stock in America. Starting from your own acquisition date, apply the spinoffs, splits, and name changes in order of occurrence to arrive at your cost basis today. You can use the excellent calculators provided on the AT&T website at http://www.att.com/gen/investor-relations?pid=5677 to compute each successive step.
Verizon also has interactive tax basis calculators which can be found at: http://investor.verizon.com/shareowner/taxbasis_calculator.aspx
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The individual spinoffs can be computed using our spinoff calculator by clicking on the image to the right. However, you really need to use the roadmap on the AT&T website to make sure you are applying all the required adjustments to cost basis.
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Spinoff Calculator |
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