How to handle ESPP sales using the desktop version of Turbotax Premier

[R1D2rds]

I recently sold over 60 small lots of stocks purchased through my former employer's ESPP and assumed turbotax would help me properly adjust each lot's basis for the purchase discount and maybe sum up the discounts to report as ordinary income. I imported the 1099B from Fidelity and selected that I had sales from an ESPP. Turbotax responded with "We'll need to review your 1099-B info. Check your investments section when you're done here and we'll walk you through." When I got to the investments section regarding the ESPP shares, it showed me all the imported lots, basis, dates, etc. and gave me the option to select all or a subset of the lots. I selected tried selecting all the lots, a subset of the lots and then just 1 lot and each time I only got the following screen.

I knew from researching the IRS website, that the lots needed to be reported on form 8949 with the basis corrected in column e, a 0 entered in column g and tell the IRS the reason in column f is 'B'. The above edit screen only gave me access to the basis and not these other columns, nor did it give me any advice. I spent hours searching on-line for how to accomplish this in turbotax, with no luck. I finally just switched to the forms view, figured out which editable worksheet fed form 8949 and edited each item and each column. That was quite a tax with 62 lots and the way the smart worksheet was displayed.

There has to be a better way. Did I do something wrong that ttax never gave me advice or the appropriate editable fields? When I was searching online for a solution, it showed prior year turbotax online programs that had  the correct fields available to edit, but I couldn't find any way to get to them in this years' program.

[MarilynG1]

There's NO NEED to enter lot-level detail when you report your sales, you just need to have your summary numbers accurate.  So you should be able to enter one sale and use the word "various" in the date acquired field.  

You can enter your 1099-B as a regular stock sale (not using the guided interview),  and not indicating Employee Stock. Enter the Cost Basis from your 1099-B (may be $0). Then you'll get the box to check for Corrected Cost Basis.

If the broker is NOT reporting basis to the IRS you simply enter the correct total basis and the sale is properly reported.  If the broker IS reporting basis to the IRS and that basis is incorrect, (reporting only your out of pocket cost), then enter the 1099-B as it reads, click on the blue "I'll enter additional info" button and enter the correct basis on the following screen.

Your Cost Basis is what you paid for the stock, plus the discount you were taxed on your W-2.  You may still need to do the math to divide that amount by number of shares sold and add to the cost basis from your records, if this applies.  

This automatically puts a Code B on Form 8949 for you.

Here's more info on Employee Stock Purchase Plans and discussion on Reporting Multiple Lots of Employee Stock Sale.