You should enter the date you acquired the asset you sold in box 1b.
In the Turbo Tax program, this item is competed using a Drop Down Menu and has two options: "Blank" and "Various". You cannot enter anything else (no free-form entry such as entering a date as you suggest) You MUST choose one of these two options.
Box 1(b) is for the date acquired. It is necessary to determine if your investment sale is long term (investment held for more than one year.) The date is often missing on the 1099-B form since the broker may not know when you acquired the investment. In that case, you may need to estimate the date acquired, keeping in mind that you should choose a date that is either more than one year before the sale date for a long term sale, or less than one year for a short term sale.
Dear "Tax Experts" - You all may be experts in taxes, but you are not experts in reading and understanding the english language. As I have explained MULTIPLE TIMES, the online Turbo Tax program will NOT allow me to enter anything in that field. It REQUIRES that I select one of the two options from the drop down menu: "Blank" or "Various". I know the date that I acquired the investment (February 5, 1996) However, since Box 1b on my 1099-B is blank, I need to enter the data from my 1099-B which is to select the option "Blank" from the drop down menu. The problem is with the Turbo Tax program; there is obviously a bug in the program since it will not allow me to select one of the options that are included by Turbo Tax.
I checked both the TurboTax desktop version as well as the online version. Both of these versions have a capacity to enter the full date and you may enter February 6,1996 like this; Desktop version.
Online version like this.
Good Luck!
I imported the data from my financial institution. When I did that, Turbo Tax pre-completed most fields but then asked me about this box 1b and the only permitted replies were those using the drop down menu. Therefore, I ended up deleting all the data that was imported and re-entering it using the dialog boxes which allowed me to enter info as described by Abraham T.
The bug in Turbo Tax appears when a user imports their data from their financial institution.