Hal_Al
Level 15

Education

On the other hand, if your "child education fund" was just a regular brokerage account, whether in your name or his:

Unknown cost basis

You have to report the sale on your tax return. Lacking any cost basis, the IRS will consider the entire sale amount as taxable. So, you need to make your best effort to determine the original cost basis, even if (worst case) it's a guess. Historical prices of publicly traded stocks are  readily available on the internet and should, at least, satisfy the IRS that your basis wasn't zero; just "google" “Historical Stock Prices". I use http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/historical/.

The stockholder relations dept. at the company may be able to help.