Why does Form 8949-B Worksheet demand a Cost or Adjusted Basis when all amounts are positive or blank?

[janet-mindy]

I downloaded my 1099-B from Broker and Form 8949 was automatically generated, But now Turbo's Federal Review keeps asking for positive amounts to be entered in Cost Basis field when all entries are either positive or blank.

[ThomasM125 · Accepted solution]

You need to report the cost basis of assets sold, as that amount is used to determine your gain or loss on sale. If the entry is blank on your form 1099-B, that may mean the amount is $0, but it could also mean it was not entered because the broker did not know what the amount was. So you may want to do some investigation to determine what the actual cost basis was as it may reduce your capital gain.

To get past the error in TurboTax, you should enter $0 for the cost basis if that is what it is, rather than leave the entry blank. 

[Jarhead_68]

But, when I print a pdf of my return, the 8949 Worksheet shows all transactions from the 1099-B, sales, dates, and the cost basis--all the information is there. Then it shows up  as aggregated on the Schedule D.  Every time I run the review, TurboTax demands the sales price of  some asset, but the review pop up form is blank. I have no idea what  transaction it wants information about. 

And this is only one of sixteen issues it flagged. None of them make sense as I review them, but reviewing the printed return it all looks correct.

If I have to spend more time trying to understand TurboTax than it takes to manually enter all my information, then why have TurboTax?

[janet-mindy]

Hi Jarhead_68,

I agree ... not sure why Turbo Tax still hasn't resolved this problem ... I spent many hours in conversations with Turbo reps getting contradictory advice and explanations that I never quite made sense to me ... 

My solution to a similar problem was to type in summary information for each type of investment section (e.g., short term, long term, etc. ) and then upload a copy of my 1099-B (which they ask for before you complete that Turbo Tax item) that I downloaded from the broker ...

that bypassed the problem Turbo has with the 8949-B Worksheet ... 

Hope this helps ...

[fanfare]

TurboTax has serious issues.

The "experts" keep saying.

"That's what IRS wants", or

"You're not doing it correctly", or

"make manual edits to all your transactions."

Never,

"We'll get on it and fix it immediately".

[eldon-123]

The stock in question I do own but have not sold it so I don't know how to get rid of the demand that I put down what it was sold for. What should I do?

[Jarhead_68]

Thanks @janet-mindy 

I hit two glitches. My workaround for the RMD worksheet glitch was to insert $.01, as my IRA distribution, instead of zero which is what it was this year. Even though I checked the box indicating no  distribution was required, it  kept insisting the amount could not be zero. I then entered $.01 as the amount not taxed. 

But, for the 8949 Worksheet, I had to repeat one of the (already entered) transactions shown on Schedule that was for a fractional share (resulting from a merger) and which was less than a dollar. I entered it as one whole dollar cost, one dollar sales price. Both workarounds seem to satisfy Turbotax, and didn't  change the Federal or the state tax liability. I saw another post somewhere here saying Turbo was choking on rounding problems by rounding during the worksheet calculations instead of the totals carried to the return--creating a mismatch between TurboT and the brokerage downloads. 

[fanfare]

after you're done with import, or manual entry, any transaction listed can be DELETED.

Use EDIT/UPDATE to make changes.

[Kgc186369]

not sure what to do

[AmyC]

If you are being asked for the information, it would seem you sold something. What did you sell?

@Kgc186369