1099-B: use both the "sums" and individual reporting?

[ericgbirds]

Hi,

Even though it’s worked great for many years, this year I’m unable to import my 1099-B from my broker into Turbotax Primier. My Mac puts up the “Establishing secure connection” dialog for a few seconds then beeps and returns to the import page with no error messages. About two hours of phone tech support with both Intuit and my broker were no help.

So, I need to enter my 1099-B manually. I was pleased to learn of the option to just enter the sums for each section (e.g., covered short-term gains), but then disappointed to see I have to report wash sales as individual transactions.

My question is can I do both? I have roughly 1,530 transactions, so entering all be hand is really, really, really not preferred (plus it’d be very error prone!). Among those, 54 are wash sales.

It seems to me that I could subtract out the wash sales from the section sums mentioned above, enter these modified sums into the “sums” section of TT and then report just those 54 transactions individually (not great but way better than 1,530). I then hope that TT will add these together. If not, I guess I can enter the modified sums as one “individual” transaction with a stock symbol of “various” or similar.

Any advice?

[MarilynG1]

Yes, you can enter Sales Section totals as one line item, but you're correct that sales that need Cost Basis Adjustments need to be individual.  However, there is a way to import your transactions in TurboTax Online and then save the tax file to your Desktop product.  You may end up needing to make manual adjustments to those sales anyway, if they are flagged in Review.   Here's more info on How to Enter a Summary in Lieu of Individual Transactions.

Another option is to enter Sales Section Totals (including wash sales), and then mail a copy of your 1099-B and Form 8949 after you Efile.  The IRS already has a copy of your 1099-B's anyway.  

If you're e-filing, you only need to mail the IRS a copy of your 8949 if you entered sales section totals for one or more sales categories and one of the following is true:

• The sales category for one or more summaries is something other than box A (short-term covered) or box D (long-term covered), or
• The box A or box D summary includes adjustments (typically listed in boxes 1f or 1g on your broker statement)

Here's more info on Mailing Form 8949 for Summary Totals. 

[ericgbirds]

Thank you for the reply. I've been doing more reading on wash sales. Just to confirm, the broker is keeping track of the adjusted basis for the stock repurchased after a wash sale, correct? That is, I don't need to adjust any bases myself. If would have to adjust a basis, I can't see how I could know which ones to adjust assuming a first-in-first-out stock lot sales practice. Several of the stocks with wash sales have multiple sales, and I don't have the info to know which subsequent bases to adjust. Is this correct?