Winter 2012 Cost Basis for Stock Transfer Agents – A Year Later January 1, 2012 marked the first full year stock transfer agents in the U.S. had to capture additional "cost basis" information on shareholder transactions and related record keeping pursuant to Section 403 of H.R. 1424, known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.   It was a challenge to implement in 2010 and 2011, and will be a continuing compliance challenge in 2012 and beyond. View Full Article      Fall 2011 What Have Stock Transfer Agents Been Up To in 2011? Quite a bit, although mostly behind the scenes.   The group of 7 - 10 major commercial agents have been polishing their "cost basis" functionality, newly re-quired by the IRS at the beginning of this year for straight-forward stock transfers.   Starting on January 1, 2012 dividend rein-vestment and direct stock purchase plan transactions, and resulting records, will also have to contain new cost basis information, followed on January 1, 2013 by options and debt security issues. View Full Article Shareholder Service Solutions, Inc. "The Shareholder Services Check-Up® was a good investment for our company, and I learned a lot too." Jeanne Gammon Manager, Corporate Affairs Alaska Air Group, Inc. What Does a Stock Transfer Agent Do? We have said a lot of things about the stock transfer industry on this website over the past five years, but have never summa-rized for our readers what a stock transfer agent actually does.   We do so here, citing both the widely known and not-so-widely known functions. Read More Mail Date vs. Payable Date The definition of these terms is simple, but the “treatment” of them by dividend-paying companies and stock transfer agents is not.   Mail date is when dividend checks and advices of electronic dividend payment are mailed by the transfer agent to individual shareholders who are not in a dividend reinvestment plan.   Payable date is when dividend payment by the company officially happens. Transfer agents can require the company to fund 100% of the dividend money on mail date, or 100% on payable date, or a hybrid arrangement where, say, funding of checks and electronic credit advices happens on mail date, and funding of the remainder (mostly for institutional investors owning through the Depository Trust Company) takes place on payable date.   This hybrid scenario is actually becoming most common.   Full funding on mail date used to be the norm; however, as corporate cash managers caught on to the substantial loss of “float” in such situations, they successfully pushed back against their transfer agent on the practice.  In fact, going to the other extreme (full funding on payable date) is not uncommon now; however, this tends to be offered only to transfer agents’ highest paying corporate clients. It is an interesting area of negotiation with transfer agents that we at Shareholder Service Solutions help our clients with all the time. Previous Terms of the Month

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