These ETFs are a royal pain to deal with from a tax perspective. Fortunately, I only invested about 1000$ in them for a month last year. One of my friends warned me about them and I immediately sold them.
Now, there was a single transaction in my 1099-B which is listed as "UNDETERMINED TERM TRANSACTIONS FOR NONCOVERED TAX LOTS" for the IAU ETF. This I presume is because iShares sold a bunch of gold to cover their expenses.
Date Acquired & Cost Basis is missing.
I have two questions:
- What should I fill up for "What do you see in box 1b"? There is no column marked "1b" in my 1099 for this transaction. But I assume they are referring to the "Date acquired" column. I have two options in the UI "The date this investment was acquired" or "Something other than a date". If I select "Something other than a date", it gives me two more options "blank" or "various".
Since on my 1099 form, the date acquired column for this transaction has "N/A" I tried using "blank" as the answer for this question. But Turbotax is not letting me file if I select that option.
I bought two lots of these shares before this transaction's "Date sold". So I am inclined to use the option "various". Is that okay?
2. Can I just fill in the cost basis as 0.0$ for this transaction. I don't mind paying taxes on a gain of 0.15$ 🙂 Will I get into trouble with the IRS if I do this?
