I received a 1099-B from my broker and the proceeds on one of the line is a negative number. The system is saying that this an an error when in fact this is the correct number that can be found on the 1099-B.
Proceeds defined: the net amount received. if you received it how can the amount be negative? ask your broker. even for a short sale, the proceeds should be positive. I have prepared returns with security sales for many years and this is the first year multiple taxpayers have reported their 1099-B showed negative proceeds. I have never seen a case.
Getting the same error. Proceeds are negative on my PUT OPTION trades that I took losses on. SELLING PUT OPTIONS for income is a common strategy. If you sell a put option for $1 and the underlying stock price stays above the strike price, you are not "put" the shares (i.e., have to buy 100 shares for each option) and you keep the $1 per share premium ($100 because option trades involve 100 shares). So, you did not "buy" anything to begin the trade, you sold a put option - - no cost basis. HOWEVER, if the underlying share price is falling and you do not want to be "put" the shares (have to buy 100 shares), you can buy back the options instead - - in this case, you will have to pay more than the original $1 you sold them for. For example, buy to close for $1.50: You sold one $1 option to receive $100, and then decided to "buy to close" the option at say $1.50. So your "Net Proceeds" will be -$150 + $100 = -$50. Hence, zero cost basis AND negative $50 proceeds. Selling put options is a very common strategy to generate income. TurboTax has handled import of such trades in prior years without generating errors, today I have 31 such "errors." The software needs fixing AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
The IRS (and TurboTax) will not accept negative numbers in either the cost basis or proceeds fields. You will have to manually edit any imported negative entries in order to proceed with e return and e-file.
Starting with the 2020 tax returns, the IRS will reject any return filed with a negative number reported in the proceeds or cost basis fields for Schedule D. TurboTax is flagging these situations ahead of time before the return is filed in order to prevent the IRS rejection. Some brokers are still using the old convention for reporting negative values and have not updated their reports to match the IRS.
The error message reported by TurboTax is telling you that the number entered cannot be negative.
Gains from expired options are reported by entering the gain amount in the proceeds column and no amount in the cost basis column. This will result in a gain.
Losses from expired options are reported by entering the loss amount as a positive number in the cost basis column and no amount in the proceeds column. The end result here would be a loss.
No negative numbers should be entered in either the cost basis or proceeds fields.
If negative numbers have been imported through your brokerage statement, you will need to edit the entries to make the correction.
Changing the numbers in the matter that you suggest causes the information that you are submitting as part of your return to differ from the information that the broker submits to the IRS. Isn't that a problem?
but there's 5 or 6 others