1099 ishares gold trust proceeds

[GeoffreyG]

As an investor in a gold (or any precious metals) Exchange Traded Fund, there are certain things of which you should be aware.

First, your profits and losses from purchases and sales are treated not at the usual lower capital gains (and losses) tax rate for long-term investment holders, but instead are taxed as collectibles (which includes precious metals) sales.  As such, you need to enter your gold ETF sales in TurboTax separately than the rest (if any) of your stock, bond, mutual fund, and all other investments.  In other words, a gold ETF is treated differently than a regular investment asset.

Specifically, you can go right to the correct section of the program to make your entries, in TurboTax Premier or Home & Business, by performing the following actions.  Simply type in the word "collectibles" into the search box on your TurboTax screen.  Then you can select the "Jump To" link that will appear after you hit the "Find" button, and you will be taken to the appropriate place in the program.  Please see the attached screen-captures for an illustration (simply click to open).

Then, you will tell the program that you have a collectibles ETF that you sold, and simply follow the data entry screens from there.  You should have all the information you need from your Form 1099.

Second, because your gold ETF is organized as a Grantor Trust (of which you own or owned exchange traded units), you may also be able to deduct certain expenses of the trust on your personal tax return.  For full details on that, please refer to the following document for the Ishares gold trust for the 2016 tax year:

https://www.ishares.com/us/literature/tax-information/ishares-gold-tax-data-12-31-16-is-20086-0117.p...

If you have further questions, encounter any difficulties, or just want to speak with a live tax expert who can walk you through your TurboTax entries (including the ability to screen-share with your computer), please feel free to contact us.  We would be happy to help you (and as a paying customer, the call is free to you).  Here is a link where you can create a support ticket and reach us:

https://support.turbotax.intuit.com/contact/
Thank you for asking this question.

[MisterBill]

I see that this is an old post, but shouldn't the information be imported correctly from your brokerage?  I've never been prompted by TurboTax for more info once it sees it on the 1099.

[KrisD15]

Yes. If you manually enter the 1099-B the program will ask if it is a collectible. If you sold gold as well as other assets, you will not be able to enter more than one transaction as a summary. 

The import option will also separate the transactions. 

[Sam78]

What about if your brokerage did not provide the 1099-B (it's evidently optional for them)? How on earth are you supposed to figure out the needed info? I think I have it figured out for IAU but have no idea if it's correct nor do I have any idea where to enter the numbers or even what number would go in what box, etc.

Then I also need the info for Aberdeen Standard Gold ETF Trust (SGOL) but I can't find any tax information on their website or instructions like IAU provides.

I've asked in several different forums how I'm supposed to calculate this information and how to enter it into TurboTax but I haven't gotten any replies so any help you can provide would be appreciated.

Thank you!

[JohnB5677]

To enter an investment please go to:

1. Start at Investment income
2. Select Stocks, Mutual Funds ....
3. No you did not get a 1099-B
4. Enter name of Broker
5. If this is an ETF Type of investment is Stocks
6. Now continue through the questions.

The information you will need is:

• Description
• Number of Units sold
• Date sold
• Net proceeds (Total selling price)
• You bought the stock (ETF)
• Date Purchased
• Number of Units (same as above
• You can choose price per share or total cost

If you need to do research on the history of the stock, this may help:

MarketWatch Stock History

[sbeards]

My 1099B downloaded from Schwab includes LT gain from stocks and Sprott Physical gold and Silver Trust in the same section of the 1099.  So, TT treats the collectible the same as a stock. Since Sprott deals only in gold and silver, shouldn't the gain be separated out and entered as a collectible because the tax rate is different for collectibles? If so, how should this be done? Thank you.

[TomYoung]

@sbeards 

If you haven't already done so, you probably should step over to the Sprott website and look at the prospectus for both of these investments.

https://sprott.com/media/1443/phys-prospectus-en.pdf
https://sprott.com/media/1451/pslv-prospectus-en.pdf

Under the section MATERIAL TAX CONSIDERATIONS they both have similar language within the section titled Taxation of U.S. Holders Making a Timely QEF Election with respect to Sale, Exchange or Other Disposition:

"Long-term capital gains of U.S. Individual Holders currently are taxable at a maximum rate of 20%."

Assuming you've made that election I'd be guided by what the prospectuses have to say.

[ktheess]

I came across the same problem as I changed brokerages mid 2020 with the old one (Pershing NetXInvestor) providing all information, especially the cost basis of those small sales of gold buillons to cover expenses, whereas the new brokerage (Morgan Stanley) did not.  In other words, after downloading the 1099 from Morgan Stanley into TT I had a number of entries to make (date acquired, cost basis, long vs short term) on each of my 6 line items.

Here is a step by step

1) Establish the lot-by-lot data (date, #shares, cost) of your holdings based on your transaction from previous tax returns or your investment tracking tool (in my case I ended up with 5 lots that had acquisition dates between 2016 and 2018.

2) Go to https://www.costbasistools.com/ and pick the calculator for the trust shares you are holding (in my case it was IUA ishares Gold Trust) and run the calculator for each lot.

3) Copy the 2020 data over into Excel (simple copy paste), i.e. the gross proceeds, cost basis and net proceeds for each of the 12 sales dates.   I created a new tab for each lot, but you could also put them in one tab next to each other or below each other.

4) Do a summary calculation in Excel by adding up gross proceeds, cost basis, net proceeds across the lots (5 in my case) by sales date - you will have 12 line items.

Smell test ... my net proceeds to cover expenses were around 30% of gross proceeds, that felt about right and I was able to match the amounts on the 1099 I received from Pershing NetXInvestor for 1H2020 this way.

The one thing I am not certain about is the acquisition date I should use for each of the 12 sales entries.   On the Pershing NetXInvestor 1099 they used the same date as sales date (so always a 2020 date) which is the most conservative approach I would say since there could be a mix of ST and LT dates in the underlying lots.   I am more inclined to put the date of my "youngest" lot in here, which now is also in LT territory (but since these are considered collectibles, taxation occurs at a higher rate than LT capital gains anyway).    Then again, this is very small money and I am not sure it matters.   

[ReneeM7122]

You are correct, the LT vs ST may not be determinable.  However one thing to keep in mind is that the gold coins might fall into the category of a hobby.  

If you acquire the gold coins for leisure rather than investment purposes, the profits are taxed as ordinary income rather than capital gains. Hobby income is reported on the “other income” line of your 1040.

@ktheess