How would I report UNDETERMINED TERM TRANSACTIONS FOR NONCOVERED TAX LOTS ?

[Sorakairi89]

I know how to report short term and long term transactions on my tax return, how would I do this one?

[rjs]

You cannot report an investment sale as "undetermined term" on your tax return. You have determine the date acquired and the basis from your own records. Then you report the sale as either short-term or long-term, depending on whether you owned it for one year or less (short-term) or more than a year (long-term).

[Sorakairi89]

Do the dots mean there was no cost basis or that the cost basis is unknown?

[rjs]

The dots mean that the brokerage does not know the cost basis. You have to provide the cost basis from your own records. Since the proceeds are only 4 cents, you will have a loss of whatever the basis is. If you can't determine the basis, you could just omit the transaction from your tax return. That would be the same as reporting zero basis. You would lose the benefit of being able to claim the loss, but the IRS will not complain if you do that.

[Spino]

I recognize this from your other question 🙂

The broker is not reporting the term, that's why it's listed as undetermined. You however are responsible to identify the term. Let's say that there were many small transactions and that's why it's undetermined. You can group the short term ones together with an acquisition date of "VARIOUS" and the long term ones together with an acquisition date of "VARIOUS."

Now you're back on solid ground because you know how to report both long term and short term transactions :-).

[Mike9241]

for 4 cents if you didn't report it at all nothing would happen. that 4 cents is rounded to whole dollars so zero would appear on the 8949. The IRS does tie out reported sales proceeds but does allow difference because of rounding and 4 cents under IRS rules for rounding would be entered as zero. 

[Sorakairi89]

Thank you so much for your help!