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Level 3
posted Mar 16, 2025 9:29:08 AM

Empty "Status" Field for Wash Sale, and Different Share Number Format for Imported 1099-B

Hello

During 2024 I had some stock trading and wash sales triggered. In TurboTax Online, I used automatic import for my 1099-B forms. Although now I see my sales, the "status" field of TurboTax for all those sales is empty, even though some of them have box 1g populated with non-zero values. Shouldn't I expect to see some symbol, such as "W" under the status field?


Another issue is that the format of imported description does not follow the one suggested (as in the image), having the number of shares at the end. Do I need to manually modify it, or is it fine? I have 250+ sales and it'll be a lot of work to do manually. Please advise.

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1 Replies
Expert Alumni
Mar 19, 2025 5:52:01 PM

If some of your sales have non-zero values in box 1g (indicating wash sales) but the "status" field is blank in TurboTax, you should expect to see something like a "W" to flag wash sales. When this doesn't happen, it could be due to:

 

  1. Import Errors: The data import from your brokerage might not have correctly mapped wash sales into TurboTax’s system.
  2. TurboTax Display: Sometimes TurboTax doesn't populate the "status" field but still calculates the wash sales adjustments in the background.

To confirm the wash sales are accounted for:

 

  1. Check the details of individual transactions in TurboTax to help ensure wash-sale adjustments are properly reflected in the gain/loss calculations.
  2. Review TurboTax's summary or reports to see if wash sales are mentioned elsewhere.
  3. If adjustments aren't showing correctly, you might need to manually review or re-enter the affected transactions. 

If the imported descriptions don’t match the format TurboTax suggests (e.g., number of shares appearing at the end instead of the beginning), it may not necessarily affect your tax calculations. Here’s why:

 

  1. TurboTax primarily uses key data fields like cost basis, proceeds, and dates for calculations. The description field is secondary and mainly for reference.
  2. If TurboTax isn’t flagging errors or warnings, the formatting issue might not require manual adjustment. 

As a precaution, you could test-edit one or two transactions to match the suggested format and check if TurboTax recalculates or flags differences.