We had stock in the telephone company that was before AT&T. Then it changed to AT&T in 1983. My husband has since passed away and I have remarried. When doing our taxes this year, we were told we had to find out what we paid for this stock back in 1983. I have no clue and do not know how to find out the cost. We have to have this to file our taxes for 2007. Please tell me what to do

Sandi Aycock

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/taxes/...tml#post958685

Do you know what the original purchase date of the AT&T stock was? You will need that in order to determine your purchase price. If you don't have records of your former husband's stock transactions, you might be able to find this out by looking at old tax returns that show the sale of any of the "baby bells," or Lucent, or Avaya, or Agere, which were spun out of his original investment. Whenever you sell stock you are supposed to list the sale on Schedule D of your tax return, and you have to show the original purchase date. If your husband sold any of these spin-offs, the purchase date he should have listed would be the same date as the purchase of the original AT&T stock. So look through your old tax returns and see if you can find this. Once you have the purchase date nailed down, I can help you find what the approximate purchase price was.

You can also query AT&T to find out what the cost of the stock was back in 1983. Their shareholder service department deals with such issues all the time.