@PlotinusRedux I did indeed recommend to them that they post an official response so everyone else who is dealing with this problem has the same info. I know they have provided the same response, verbatim, to other individuals who have reached out to the office of the president with this problem, so I'm not sure why they don't want to just post it directly for everyone. Instead, they told me they are "monitoring the message boards" to make sure everyone gets the info. Maybe they feel like having a customer like me relay their message will get fewer angry responses than if they post directly? Who knows, your guess is as good as mine.
That said, I really wouldn't worry about it. I *strongly* suspect it makes no difference w/the IRS whether you can point to an official reply from TT or not. Even if the IRS is not ok with TT's use of transaction-level rounding (and presumably they are ok with it, because it's hard to imagine TT wouldn't take on that liability unless they were confident), it's extremely hard to believe that they would actually penalize anyone for submitting a return prepared as calculated by TT. I gotta believe the very worst-case scenario is they'd just adjust your capital gain w/o penalty. And even that seems pretty unlikely.
Honestly folks, we have our answer and I think it's just a waste of time to keep spinning our wheels over this. I'm not happy with the answer either, but mostly I'm just unhappy about how difficult it was to get that answer. Personally, I intend to employ one of the workarounds to make sure my return exactly matches my 1099-B rather than being $70 off due to rounding--and if I had to guess, that's probably a bigger (though still very small) risk than just going with what TT calculates. After tax season when the IRS phone lines aren't jammed, I'll probably give them a call to ask them directly what their view is about rounding on Form 8949. But for now, I don't think there's much value in us spending more time agonizing over this.
@bredman For adding a reconciliation line to offset the rounding, do it on Form 8949. Your 1099-B should show the correct/precise capital gain, and the goal here is to adjust Form 8949 so it matches your 1099-B.
NOTE: I'm not a tax expert, and everything above is just my own opinion/understanding. Good luck finishing your taxes, everyone!
