Agreed, that the IRS definition of "rounding" can lead one to round negative numbers incorrectly, but it goes against the rounding rules of basic arithmetic. You quoted IRS pub 15 in June 2019 in reply to another thread about rounding :
fanfare wrote on June 1 2019: Please see IRS Pub 17 Computations on page 13. I think this also addresses the issue with 1095A.
" Rounding off dollars. You can round off cents
to whole dollars on your return and schedules. If
you do round to whole dollars, you must round
all amounts. To round, drop amounts under 50
cents and increase amounts from 50 to 99
cents to the next dollar. For example, $1.39 becomes
$1 and $2.50 becomes $3.
If you have to add two or more amounts to
figure the amount to enter on a line, include
cents when adding the amounts and round off
only the total."
The correct approach is to round the absolute value of the number.
That way $2.50 becomes $3, and -$2.50 becomes -$3.
This is the approach that is arithmetically / mathematically correct.
