The programmers mess with the security sales program every single year and this year, in my opinion, is not one of their better efforts. You can end up not being able to see, on one summary page, exactly how your trade is being reported.
In the case of an ESPP, when you're done with the step by step process you see a summary page titled "Tell us about your [Broker's Name] 1099-B" - as if you haven't been doing that all along - with the first 1099-B screen where you entered information repeated and everything - Description, proceeds, date sold, etc. - all "hard coded" on the page and looking exactly like the erroneous 1099-B you got from the broker. Your first impression is that the step by step guide is not saving the results of your work.
If that's the screen you're referring to it's a red herring on the part of TurboTax.
After that you tell TurboTax that you want to see a summary of the 1099-B and you get a screen titled "Here's all the sales reported by [Broker's Name] and again, the results of your updating and working through through the interview are not reflected on the screen. Yet again your impression is that TurboTax is not saving your work.
If that's the screen you're referring to it's another red herring on the part of TurboTax.
If you click through again you're at a screen titled ""Here's what we got for these sales - [Broker's Name] but all you see here is summary information as to total gain or loss by sales categories. If you've already entered sales using those sales categories it's still not clear if that ESPP sale is properly reported!!!
Only when you click through to the page "Here's what we got for these sales" do you see a gain or loss that you can recognize as being correct, though nowhere in the summary process did you ever see your sale laid out - Description, Sale date, Sale amount, Date acquired, Adjusted basis - exactly as you know it's going to be ultimately reported.
Tom Young
