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Level 2
June 1, 2019
Question

After 1099-B import, one of my boxes 1e literally says "missing" on my actual 1099-B from Schwab.. what should I enter? Nothing? Or look up the cost basis I paid?

  • June 1, 2019
  • 5 replies
  • 42 views
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5 replies

Level 4
June 1, 2019

Unfortunately financial institutions won't always have the acquisition info about securities you sell. If you know what you paid for the shares that were sold, you should just enter that amount*. If you don't know what you paid, but you know that they were purchased and when they were purchased, you can generally look up historic stock values and use that to determine what you paid. If you don't know any of that, then you'll generally just have to use any info you can to estimate when they would have been purchased, and conservatively estimate what you paid using the lowest market value in that time range.

*If the stock is "covered" stock, then you should report a cost basis of $0, then indicate you have "additional info" and use the "corrected cost basis" field to enter what you've determined as the cost basis. This is unlikely because typically institutions will know the cost basis for "covered" assets, and if not they will report $0. Also, if shares have split, or there have been mergers with other companies, it's possible you may need to adjust the original purchase price to account for these activities. Most historical price sites will show you a "split-adjusted" price on historical dates that account for share splits, so those are easy to account for. Other activities like mergers can be more difficult to account for, so hopefully that doesn't apply in this case.

Paul6Author
Level 2
June 1, 2019
My form 1099-B has 2 parts.. one says:
"short term transactions for which basis is reported to IRS"
and the next page says
"short term transactions for which basis is missing and not reported to IRS"

so the one that's missing is listed on the latter page. Funny thing, I never sold this stock and never got dividends and never made money on it, so idk why it's even on this list. So I'm going to leave 1e-cost basis blank, as it just says "missing" on my 1099-
B, and I'm not going enter the cost basis I paid for it. But I'm a little worried about this though
Level 2
February 24, 2021

I have a similar worry. Broker 1099B says basis is "missing". It's entirely clear that the basis is identical to the sale price, but reported as "missing". When I enter the correct amount, will some IRS computer flag this as an error? Dealing with IRS errors in the past has been a nightmare.