ESPP Sale not allowing me to report the "Amount of Compensation Income for This Sale"

[Zarr]

I sold some ESPP stock along with some RSUs, each from multiple purchase lots.  For the first lot of ESPP, there were two separate lines reported by my brokerage firm for the ESPP stock sold in the same transaction.  For both lines, I indicated "Yes, this is stock that was acquired through an employee stock plan", and for "Would you like us to remember this answer for all sales in this account", I selected "No, I'll answer this question for each sale separately because not all sales are employee stock."  Then I selected "I have all my info, and can enter it on my own".  For the first line item, it allowed me to enter The Amount of Compensation Income for this Sale.  For the second one, it put 0.00, and would not let me change it.  Do I need to combine the amount of compensation for both line items into the details of the first one?

[GeorgeM777]

That is one option as it appears you already know the amount of your compensation income.  There is another option which may be more efficient and allow you to avoid having to respond to questions which may not be relevant to your tax situation.   Now whether or not you received a Form 1099-B, there are two employee stock situations when you must answer Yes to the question about whether you have employee stock. The two situations are when you have Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) stock and your employer did not include any "compensation income" in your Form W-2 (it's very uncommon for employers to fail to do this), or any time you sell stock acquired through an Incentive Stock Option (ISO) plan.  In all other cases, you only need to answer Yes to the question about having an employee stock sale if you don't know the cost basis and need help finding it, or you think you already have the correct cost basis but would like us to walk you through how your cost basis is determined to confirm it's correct.  Otherwise, you can answer No to skip several unnecessary questions.

Thus, you might consider going back and deleting your responses indicating that the stock in question was ESPP stock.  Then review the results and follow-up with us regarding your entries, whether they look correct or need further adjustment. 

[CATaxFilerNorCal]

I don't believe the answer given fit the question asked.  I also have a similar/same problem.  I have 2 ESPP sales.  On one of them TurboTax allows me to enter the amount of Compensation Income for This Sale and on the other it does not.  Seems like a bug or perhaps we are supposed to enter the amount on the one transaction that allows editing this field, although nowhere does it indicate that's correct.

[Zarr]

Hi CATaxFilerNorCal.  I believe you are correct.  It appears to be a bug in the software.  The first part of the reply to my initial question seems to acknowledge that  you can do what I was suggesting as an alternative: bundle them as one transaction for everything including the Compensation Income, however, another path worked for me.  I had initially imported the data from my broker.  In trying to adjust my initial stock data, I ended up importing the data again, and deleted the initial import.  Inexplicably, the software behaved correctly, and let me input Compensation Income for all of my transactions.  I had about a dozen transaction in total.  If you imported the data from your broker, you may want to try to re-import, and delete the original import.  If that does not work, maybe try manually inputting the data, instead of importing.  My conjecture is that the defect has to do with the import function.

[psherman42]

This is a good answer, but a bit hard to follow.

Remember, in the case of sale of RSU (Restricted Stock Unit) shares, there will be no compensation income (i.e., bargain element) because that compensation was already included in your W-2, box 1 (and similarly noted as a line item in the comment box 14) in the year the RSU shares were given.

So, for the sale of RSU shares, there is no compensation income to report in the year they are sold.

Note also that RSU are not ESPP; the former have the tax on their bargain elements paid in the year given (reported by company on W-2), while the latter have their bargain elements paid in the year sold (reported by you on Sch. D).

PS--Turbotax seems to have trouble recognizing what is "RSU" mentioned in W-2 box 14 -- it's always a question asked during the Review step. The drop-down list doesn't show any relevant choices, so you're always forced to select "Other" from the bottom of that drop-down list. Since this box is simply a comment field, you can select anything you want. Hopefully, next version year, we will see a drop-down list item that says "Restricted Stock Unit" 🙂