How do I report a covered call on Turbo tax when the call expired. I was the writer and received the total premium as a gain. When I mark expired it does not work.

[megan11]

I wipes out the amount of the proceed and does not show any gains, what is the workaround?

[TheRonald1]

Enter it as any stock short sale.

Description - x Calls on XYZ exp. ?/?/20

Bought Date = expiry date

Cost = $0 (don't leave blank)

Sold Date = writing date

Proceeds = $abc.de you received.

When I was doing a lot of trading, I had all downloaded to Quicken, and then downloaded to TurboTax.

TurboTax had a glitch that despite being a short sale in quicken it cleared the sold date since it was before the buy.

I had to manually enter those dates.

[Mike9241]

if your broker partners with Turbotax you can import the activity. the issue is Turbotax doesn't like $0 cost so if you have a lot of trades like this TT will drive you batty by requiring you to enter $0 cost for each of those trades. 

[CA6]

I imported the data from the bank direclty but still cost basis is 0.  What to do ?  For a covered call literally the cost basis was 0.

[fanfare]

Option write, expires:
Since you are short, the Date Acquired shows the date of expiration,
Enter "Expired" in 8949 column e) cost, but Turbo Tax won't let you do that so cost is zero.

Your gain is the amount you received and it is a Short Term Capital Gain.
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Note: For option short sales with a loss, Date Disposed is one business day after Date Acquired (options settle in one day). But if you have a gain, Date Disposed is equal to Date Acquired.

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there's no issue with a cost of zero. If TurboTax warns, ignore that.

@CA6