After you file

I HAVE A FIX!

Hi everyone, I have a workaround but it’s not that easy to explain . I struggled like all of you with the crypto transactions and essentially having too many transactions (4000 total including stock and crypto). Turbotax essentially cant take the data and produce it into your 1040 without crashing.

I’m sure many of you are trying to import your data from online servers however I ran into a couple problems doing that myself. For simplicity purposes and for the ease of me explaining how I got mine to work I will use specifics that happened to me as examples.

First off, I had 12 different sources that I needed to list on my wages section of my TurboTax. The first was Coinbase and I found that linking your API key to import transactions seems to be the most simplistic. However, once the transactions loaded into TurboTax I had 177 transactions and for each one of them TurboTax brought to my attention that I needed to ‘review’ then and enter in on a drop-down list if I purchased, inherited,  or other for each transaction. That specific issue takes a lot of time and multiple clicks on a very slow TurboTax platform. But, I was determined to get my taxes done and thought if worst case I had to do this for all of them it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. However, after two hours of entering transactions saving my TurboTax and coming back to it none of the data saved. In fact one problem that I had often was that the work I did would not safe no matter what I did after entering and updating certain information within TurboTax. My solution for that was to make all my corrections before filing while logged in during one particular session.

But, what to do if you want to not have to enter if you purchased etc for each transaction?

With Coinbase in particular they do not generate a 1099b..Why does that matter you may ask? Because if you’re going to summarize all of your transactions into two line items your cost and proceeds (alternative way than listing each transaction) then you’ll need to either attach a CSV File, a 1099 supplied by your brokerage to TurboTax upon the next screen when ‘typing it in myself’ and entering in those 2 values.

Now initially when I attempted to do my taxes the first time around I preferred to have each transaction listed there so that IRS wouldn’t have any issues and that I didn’t need to attach any documents but as I started loading more brokerages and the number of transactions started piling up that created another problem in itself. Apparently you can only have a specific number of transactions in TurboTax. The number that I’ve read online varies and with that being said, it’s hard to know what the actual number is. So for my other platforms that I loaded by logging in many of them synced from the network and they synced with success. But even some stock accounts like Charles Schwab prompted me with questions I had to answered because the sync was not spot on. And that very issue right there is what I think is also the cause of the misalignment with uploading crypto transactions.

So let’s fast forward… You now have uploaded all of your different brokerages and the number of transactions low enough that you can maneuver through TurboTax with ease. What do I mean by that? When you have too many transactions or there’s too much data when you try to toggle between federal and state and the review section you’re met with a symbol of four blue dots that spins for an extended amount of time. That’s a clear indication that you won’t be able to file. The reason why I think after spending so many hours investigating why mine wasn’t successfully e-filing is all because it only allows you to put in limited amount of data in before it doesn’t work.

So let’s assume you have all your info in, you go through the prompts in the review section and your ready to file. TurboTax will bring you to a screen that asks you if you want to review your federal and state forms… It’s in the screen that you can click view my forms and see a copy of your tax return. If this screen doesn’t load that means that there’s too many transactions and too much data that I can’t generate the PDF. But, if it does load that means that you may be able to e-file but worst case if not you can print and mail in your tax return.

Recap:

Again, if you’re not able to generate the document in the file section or the tax center section, turbo tax most likely won’t let you e-file, which is why, a lot of you are talking about printer problems and that you can’t print the forms. This is Because there’s too much data and the system crashes when trying to generate the forms. OK so what do you have to do? Go back to your brokerage accounts and if need be delete more transactions summarize attached a 1099B you may be asking what if I don’t I never got a 1099B, then upload your CSV of transactions.

Okay now you’ve gotten to the point where you reduce your number of transactions and you ready to file again so this is where it gets a little confusing while going through the filing process I was prompted with a screen that said view federal and state forms before e-filing if you click the box and it loads your 1040 immediately save the information however unfortunately for me, mine loaded but once trying to submit the e-file it failed at reaching the server. I reached out to TurboTax and spoke to a CPA and upper management support and the consensus was to mail in the tax return. Apparently you only need to send in 40 or so pages and if they require any 1099‘s or additional data they’ll reach out.