You are tying yourself into knots over nothing, and it appears that your problem is that you are trying to use the RSU interview to report the sale and the use of the RSU interview is absolutely not necessary. There is no "income tax reporting" reason to use the RSU interview. There really are only two legitimate reasons to use the RSU interview:
- The compensation created by the vesting wasn't reported on your W-2. That didn't happen here
- You have no idea what your basis in the stock is. I'll tell you that.
Your basis in the stock you acquired is:
(GROSS number of shares that vested) x (per share FMV used by employer to calculate the W-2 amount reported).
For example, if you had an RSU for 100 shares that vested and your employer reported W-2 income for that vesting of $2,826.00, then you know that your per-share basis is $2,826.00 / 100 = $28.26, and you use that $28.26 as your basis when reporting any sales of the stock. This is irrespective of the fact that out of that 100 shares maybe you only received 72 shares "after taxes." Those taxes deal with the compensation reported on the W-2 and those taxes are also reported on the W-2. Those shares and those taxes have nothing to do with the subsequent sale of the stock.
So now that you know how to determine your per share basis in the EMC stock you can treat the subsequent sale of EMC to Dell in exactly the same fashion you'd treat that sale if you'd purchased the EMC stock through your broker. The "RSU" aspect of the shares has no relevance here.
Tom Young
