Is there a 10 million dollar sales total limit to entering a summary of stock transactions instead of the individual ones?

[passiveobserver]

So turbotax refused to download my trades from ameritrade for 2019 because I had too many individual trades. According to this page:

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/entering-importing/help/how-do-i-enter-a-large-number-of-stock-tra...

I could just enter a summary of the transactions, just a total proceeds, a total cost basis, and then send in individually everything where the wash rule applied. Fine. That was a lifesaver. But there's a cryptic statement at the top of that stinking page, "If you need to enter a bunch of stock transactions with a total sales volume of less than $10,000,000 (ten million)".

Well this was not a problem for me in 2019 because it was less than that. But guess what. Year to date 2020 trades for me is..... 8.8 million dollars, and it's only August 17 2020. Well I need to know if this was some jackass talking out of his ass, or if there actually IS a law that says I can only use a summary of the stock transactions if the sales total is less than 10 million dollars, because if there is such a restriction, I need to IMMEDIATELY stop trading, and very, very carefully let my open options positions expire and otherwise close them down as carefully as possible, or else I'm screwed with a capital SCREW because I have many, many, many trades, and if turbotax won't download them, I absolutely need to do the summary option, for one thing even if I tried to enter them in individually, I bet turbotax wouldn't work, for the same reason it claims it can't download my 1099 in the first place.

But the thing is, I have spent many hours trying to find ANY evidence of this 10 million dollar restriction. It is not mentioned anywhere in the form 8949 instructions. It is not mentioned anywhere online so far as I can find. I call [phone number removed] and wait on hold for long stretches of time, only to get representatives that either don't understand what I'm asking or can find no evidence of this 10 million dollar limit. I need to know if whoever wrote that page was totally BSing or if there is an actual law that says I'm limited to 10 million in sales volume. If there is such a restriction, I need references, what is the document I can read which will tell me about this, I want to see the law in black and white, as they say on the internet, pics or it didn't happen. I want to see the document from the IRS that tells me I can't do this if my sales volume is more than 10 million dollars.

Also, if there IS a 10 million dollar restriction, can I trade stock futures instead of stocks directly? I want this to be the year I FINALLY erase my capital loss carryover. Especially since my regular income is WIPED OUT and it's being wasted otherwise. I want to finally pay taxes on my capital gains instead of writing -3000 year after year after year after year. I am close. I am so close. I can do it, if only I can keep trading past the 10 million dollar limit.... if there even IS a 10 million dollar limit!

Does anyone know anything about this?

[rjs · Accepted solution]

It's not a law. It's a TurboTax restriction. TurboTax does not handle any amounts larger than $9,999,999 for any purpose. TurboTax is designed for ordinary taxpayers. It's not designed to handle high-volume stock trading, exceptionally high income, or other extreme situations. You have to find another way to file your tax returns. You should talk to some local tax professionals and see if one of them is able to prepare your returns.

[Critter-3]

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/entering-importing/help/how-do-i-enter-a-large-number-of-stock-tra...

[fanfare]

"TurboTax does not handle any amounts larger than $9,999,999 for any purpose. "

This is not exactly correct.

There are various "tricks" to work around the limitation, ( you may be able to think of them), 

and TurboTax will put down more than 10,000,000 if that is the number that results from its calculation.

[fanfare]

@passiveobserver 

"can I trade stock futures instead of stocks directly? I want this to be the year I FINALLY erase my capital loss carryover."

You must meet the much higher account margin maintenance requirements and have a broker that will enable your account for futures trading.

If you figure out how to wipe out your carryforward loss with futures,

please post, it would be very helpful.

[passiveobserver]

So basically the developers were lazy and arrogant and left this ridiculous limitation that is at the same level as the Y2K bug in it. Because it would be really easy for them to change a 7 digit limit to a 9 digit limit, or 20 for that matter. The only semi-reasonable excuse I can think of other than that they put in a 7 digit limitation arbitrarily is that it COULD be that they used signed long ints for storing the number of dollars AND cents, but then it still should be able to go up to a bit past 20 million (specifically 2^31/100), it doesn't need to be limited to 7 digits, and as it doesn't keep the cents on the bottom line anyway it might as well go up to 2 billion and have it just go to 20 million on the individual transactions, if it was coded properly. Even so, as programming gaffes go, it's very similar to the Y2k bug. Disgraceful in this day and age.

"Ordinary"? Well buster, just because the sales volume is pushing 10 million because I used the same money to buy and sell many many times, doesn't mean I actually have a high income. In fact I've got an AGI in the 4 digits and have so for many years, maybe in MY humble opinion, YOU'RE too "extraordinary" to be allowed to use cheap software and YOU should have to pay a tax preparer to do your taxes instead of me mister fancypants 5 or 6 figure income earner? Who is intuit to decide how I choose to make my living is too "extraordinary" to be allowed to use their software? It's a perfectly valid way to make a living, and they certainly aren't selective over occupations of those allowed to use their software for anything else now, are they? Like Turbotax won't just refuse to operate if it determines the user is a mortician because that's not an "ordinary" occupation. That would be pretty absurd to make such a judgement call, wouldn't it? I don't see my situation as any different. They should simply code their software properly.

As for the other reply, that said there were "ways" around it..... how do you propose I do this? I can't get it to fill it in automatically by downloading the transactions from Ameritrade since there are too many transactions. The only thing I can think of is deliberately putting in the wrong numbers, perhaps subtracting 10 million from the cost basis AND the proceeds so that the net profit is the same, and then submitting a 1040X afterwards. What a waste if that is what I have to do. The turbotax developers ought to be ashamed of themselves in any case.

At any rate I have the answer now in any case. It's not the IRS's fault, it's turbotax's.....

[passiveobserver]

I've been trading futures for the last 2 months actually. Ameritrade gave me permission to do so. I was not asking a hypothetical question. The downside is that they charge me $2.57 commission per option contract instead of $.25 and that adds up in a hurry. That's not what I was asking though, I wasn't asking for a method of making winning trades or if there was some accounting scheme I could use to hack the system, I was just asking if trades in futures and options in futures would add to the cost basis and proceeds totals even though they're on a different statement, this "1099-B" form. So for instance after about 1 month trading futures options since I've tried to switch over to them instead of regular stocks and options because I was worried about the 10 million dollar limit, I've gained about 10 thousand dollars in the /ES (S&P 500 futures). Pretty good, right? Except it involved about 150 options contracts (adding up to ~400$ of commissions, not cool for it to cut that much into the profit). The total cost basis is probably about 100 thousand dollars, and the proceeds, 110 thousand dollars, I'd estimate, if I went over the history and added up the total of the options bought and sold (and expired short and long). The question is, with the statement I get at the end, is that just going to show as a 10 thousand dollar profit? Or is that going to actually come to me as an additional 100 thousand dollars added to my cost basis and an additional 110 thousand dollars added to my proceeds? Because if it's counted the same as regular stocks, I had better stop trading the futures as there's no advantage to them whatsoever, all they do is be incredibly inefficient with exorbitant commissions and I might as well trade options in etfs for the same indices that carry much lower commissions, or the NDX options. I'm suspicious the answer is yes, it counts the same as stocks. It doesn't make THAT much difference. I've been trying to unwind my positions in it anyway, also because this ridiculous stock market bubble is obviously on its last legs and I don't want to be left without a chair when the music stops when it crashes (another reason to use option spreads with very short expiration dates, it's functionally similar to a stop loss).

[Rick19744]

Each contract is a separate transaction and will be accounted for in the same manner as a regular stock trade.

The IRS is not a fan of any "netting" regardless of the transaction.  

[fanfare]

Your futures transactions will go on Form 6781, not Form 8949.

Only the outcome, i.e. net profit or loss for the year, is reported.

[fanfare]

Besides TD, there are other brokers that have lower commissions on futures.

But if you're like me, you have several accounts and you're pretty much locked in.

If you have a $10,000 profit, I suggest you call it quits for the year now.

You can lose a lot more than that in a flash.

[joan999]

Try Taxact, it allows 2 billions total trading value.

[Vicki_C]

The "work-around" is pretty labor intensive. You can enter groupings of transactions as long as you don't exceed the $9,999,999, but the groupings may not always coincide with the summary totals. I was able to do this with a spreadsheet and entering each transaction and then totaling groups of transactions under the limit, but if you do this, you need to include your spreadsheet with your return and the copy of your 1099-B, so your accuracy can be verified. If you are dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions, this will take a significant amount of time.