How to Mass Update Sale Category to Box A - Short Term Covered for all of my 100's of Stock Sales instead of doing it manually one by one

Your brokerage statements should include a summary of your transactions, grouped by sales category, for example, "Box A short-term covered" or "Box D long-term covered." You'll enter the summary info instead of each individual transaction.

1. Open or continue your return (if it's not already open) and search inside TurboTax for the phrase stock sales.
2. Select the Jump to link in the search results.
3. Answer Yes to both Did you sell stocks, mutual funds, bonds, or other investments? and Did or will you receive a 1099-B form or brokerage statement for these sales?
   • If you land on Here are all your 1099-B sales, select Add sales from a different brokerage. Then answer Yes to Did or will you receive a 1099-B form or brokerage statement for these sales?
4. When asked how you want to enter your 1099-B, select I'll type it in myself.
5. Select or enter your brokerage on the next screen and continue.
6. On the following screen (Tell us about...), answer the questions until you reach the next screen. Select the second option, Let's enter a summary instead, and select Continue.
7. You'll now be able to enter the total proceeds (sales) and cost basis, along with the sales category. Refer to your 1099-B for the amounts and category. When finished, select Continue.

When you are done, you'll eventually come to the Here's a summary of your broker sales screen where you can edit, delete, or enter more sales.

There are seven possible "Box" designations that indicate the holding period (Long/Short Term) and the reporting status. 

 

Code A. This code indicates a short-term transaction for which the cost or other basis is being reported to the IRS. Use this code to report a transaction that the recipient will report on Schedule D (Form 1040), line 1a, or on Form 8949 with box A checked with totals being carried to Schedule D (Form 1040), line 1b.

 

Code B. This code indicates a short-term transaction for which the cost or other basis is not being reported to the IRS. Use this code to report a transaction that the recipient will report on Form 8949 with box B checked with totals being carried to Schedule D (Form 1040), line 2.

 

Box C. Report on a Part I with box C checked all short-term transactions for which you can't check box A or B because you didn't receive a Form 1099-B (or substitute statement).

 

Code D. This code indicates a long-term transaction for which the cost or other basis is being reported to the IRS. Use this code to report a transaction that the recipient will report on Schedule D (Form 1040), line 8a, or on Form 8949 with box D checked with totals being carried to Schedule D (Form 1040), line 8b.

 

Code E. This code indicates a long-term transaction for which the cost or other basis is not being reported to the IRS. Use this code to report a transaction that the recipient will report on Form 8949 with box E checked, with totals being carried to Schedule D (Form 1040), line 9.

 

Box F.  Report on a Part II with box F checked all long-term transactions for which you can't check box D or E because you didn't receive a Form 1099-B (or substitute statement).

 

Code X. Use this code to report a transaction if you cannot determine whether the recipient should check box B or box E on Form 8949 because the holding period is unknown.

 

You will have to mail a copy of your 1099-B to the IRS.  TurboTax will produce a Form 8453. You print the Form 8453 and attach the brokerage statement(s) to it. 

Instead of entering individual stock sales, I have decided to use the summary method as mentioned and mail the 1099-B with my Tax Return.  However, here is another problem.  If you have multiple brokerage accounts, the wash sales losses that are disallowed need to be reconciled manually across all brokerage accounts to arrive at an accurate cost basis.  How do we do this when there are 100's of transactions spread across multiple brokerage accounts?

There really needs to be a way to bulk-update that category. I am not alone in having literally THOUSANDS of trades from crypto brokerages where box C needs to be manually updated. This should be completely unnecessary because they are encoded as such in the .txf files imported! 2018, 2019, and 2020 in my experience of Turbotax required you to manually update each-and-every-single-one-in-excruciatingly-inefficient-fashion!

There really is no solution to your issue when multiple a/c's are involved.  Even professional software provides no aid in locating and reporting wash sales across multiple accounts. I've worked with various pro software but none were even able to import from a broker. Foreign brokers don't even issue 1099-B's. worse if you trade identical securities in any type of IRA or Solo 401(K) because there is usually no report to use.

The program I wrote to create the txf files for my trades can easily be tweaked to calculate FIFO and wash sales based on the coin/stock instead of the current coin-per-exchange/wallet. I'll need to do that starting next year I think with updates written into the stimulus bill. However, the issue is that the txf file DOES encode which box to check but TurboTax completely ignores that and you have to update it for each trade at the expense of 4-5 clicks and several seconds each (times thousands for many people).

@PleaseAddBulkEditStockTrades 

 

When you trade crypto where you don't get a 1099-B, then Sales Category C and F are the correct categories.

That's not the issue - Again the issue is not that we don't know what to code it - The issue is that the import function ignores the fact that they are coded as such and require you to tediously update each and every trade.

Then you need better tax software that will allow you to incorporate the 8949 Box Category in your data file.

 

We're not allowed to name better software on this forum. The moderators get upset.

Why not? name the better software turbotax sucks for mass edit.