TT can't make up its mind about form 8949

[JimBobKennedy]

Before I federal e-filed TT told me I would need to mail form 8949 after my return was accepted.

My return was accepted and I reopened TT to check the status. Now it says I'm all done.

Which is correct?

[Mike9241]

it depends. if you entered summary transactions on the form 8949 which would show up on schedule D lines 1b, 2, 3, 8b, 9, or 10 then you are supposed to send the IRS detail of those transactions. you use form 8453 and attach the 1099-B detail them mail the documents to the addresss on the form 

  if you enter each transaction separately, then there is no need to send the IRS the 1099-B/8453.

also any entries on lines 1a or 8a do not require detail to be sent.

 https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8453.pdf check the box 8949

[JimBobKennedy]

You have tried to answer a question related to my question and I'm grateful.

Following up to your reply,I'm very sure TT said I would need to mail a form 8949, not 8953 and not 1099-B. So are you saying TT is even more broken than I thought, because it told me to send the wrong form?

Going a little deeper, how would I know if I did those summary things? I went through the interview and imported 1099-Bs from my brokers and those imports contain all the trade details. Then TT generated some 8949s in the course of preparing my taxes. I certainly never manually summarized anything. So how would I know? Shouldn't TT know, and simply tell me? Also, why would it needlessly take an approach that creates more work for me?

But getting back to my original question, it is almost as if TT does know whether it did summary something something, and it is either trying to tell me it did, or it's trying to tell me it didn't. My real question is why would TT tell me one thing at one time and another thing at another time, when my tax return did not change between those two times?

Thanks for your reply!

[JimBobKennedy]

I went into forms and looked at both 8949 forms that TT generated and populated. Everything there is individual transactions, not summary transactions.

So I'm pretty confident I don't need to mail 8953 or 1099-B.

I still don't understand whether TT was correct when it said I needed to mail 8949, or when it said I don't need to.

[fanfare]

Form 8453 is a cover sheet for other documents being sent on paper.

It identifies the taxpayer and alerts the IRS transcriber to the important information attached.

TurboTax can be wrong about when the 8949 details need to be mailed. See recent posts.

Also, the help FAQ is misleading and can cause the taxpayer to send the wrong forms.

@JimBobKennedy