Thank you for the reply.
Perhaps my sales are getting flagged because of a situation more similar to #3:
3: Separate Purchases
You buy 100 shares of XYZ in the morning, and decide to buy another 100 shares in the afternoon of the same day. Within 30 days, you sell the morning shares at a loss.
For all we know, the price of this stock dropped between morning and afternoon, and your afternoon purchase is for the purpose of claiming a loss while maintaining your investment. In other words, you may have been trying to get the result the wash sale rule is designed to prevent. So the IRS will probably contend that the wash sale rule applies in this situation.
The result should be different, though, if you gave a single buy order for 200 and your broker happened to execute it by buying two lots of 100 shares each. In this case it’s clear the shares you have left after the sale weren’t bought to replace the shares you sold.
To modify the scenario above,
1) Jun 1st AM: Purchase 100 Shares of Stock ABC at $100, total 10,000
2) Jun 1st PM: Purchase 100 Shares of Stock ABC at $100, total 10,000
2) Jun 15th: Sell 100 Shares of Stock ABC at $80, total 8,000; loss of $2,000. (Now wash sale applies, and you have 100 shares left)
What happens to cost basis at this point?
What happens if I sell the rest of the 100 shares, do I get to claim a loss or will it all be counted as a wash sale and also no cost basis adjustment?
More broadly, what should I do?
Thank you!
