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Level 2
February 1, 2026
Question

1099-B with Granted RSU in 2025 not sold.

  • February 1, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 27 views

My company gave me 47 restricted stock units in 2025 but retained 16 units to cover taxes.
My brokerage account has 1099-B showing proceeds with a mixture of covered and noncovered securities.
I did NOT sell any RSUs, so do I really have to submit the 1099-B on my 1040?

    1 reply

    Level 15
    February 3, 2026

    Yes, you need to report the Form 1099-B on your tax return to report the sale of stock necessary to raise the money  to pay your payroll taxes associated with it. 

     

    The restricted stock units (RSU's) are taxable income and as such the value of them is included in your salary wages (box 1), social security wages (box 3) and Medicare wages (box 5) on your W-2 form. Since you have to pay social security and Medicare taxes on the income, and also income taxes, some of the shares are  sold by the company to pay those taxes. They are paid to the IRS by the company.

     

    You need to report the sale of those shares to report any resulting gain or loss, but the gain or loss is minimal since you buy and sell them almost immediately. So, the gain on sale when you report the Form 1099-B in TurboTax should be minimal. Often, the Form 1099-B will report a minimal amount for the cost basis as you may have paid little or nothing to acquire the shares. However, the income reported on your W-2 form needs to be included in the cost basis of the shares sold, so you may need to adjust the cost basis reported on the Form 1099-B to compensate for that.

     

    A simple way to determine the cost basis of your RSU shares sold is to divide the income for the RSU's as reported on your W-2 form, plus any additional money you may have spent to acquire them, by the number of shares acquired. That will give you the cost of the shares that you can then multiply by the number of shares sold to arrive at their cost basis.

     

    You will see an option when you enter the Form 1099-B in TurboTax to indicate that you need to adjust the cost basis. Choose that option and you can enter the correct cost basis if necessary.

     


     

     

     

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