Ok, after reading through the various comments more carefully, I think I finally get it. It seems that the answer to the question is that even if the cash in lieu of shares is technically for the shares of a company formed by merger or spin-off and NOT for the shares of the original company, the shares sold should be considered as those of the original company, since these were "sold" to "purchase" shares in the new company (which were then "bought" as fractional shares by the new company and "paid for" by cash in lieu). Therefore, the answer to the question about how the shares were acquired is not how the fractional shares that were sold were acquired (i.e. merger or spin-off) but how the original shares were acquired. Is that correct?
A related question. some of the stocks I owned in the original company from which the spin-off company arose were purchased incrementally by dividend reinvestment, so, when asked whether any of the shares were purchased over a year before the date of "sale" of the stocks, should I chose the option that they were all purchased prior, or that none of them were purchased prior to a year ago, since these are the only two options (and not "part of the shares were and part were not)?
