"This import was unsuccessful" when trying to import a 1099 from Betterment

[taras-kaduk]

The 2016 tax form became available today at Betterment. I am trying to import the forms, and I get an error message in return.
1) the password IS working on Betterment website
2) the forms ARE available on Betterment website
3) There is no connection loss - I can access both Betterment and Turbotax

I tried my password first, and then went to Betterment and generated an app password and tried it. No luck.

I am not going to manually enter anything.

[taras-kaduk · Accepted solution]

After doing some research online, I guess the best answer here is to quit TurboTax. Sad to leave, but seems like they just can't figure out how to import data from Betterment. Too many users have this issue, and TurboTax says nothing. Silence.

[justinp]

Still not working for 2018 taxes

[jkahn001]

Having the same issue here with one of my Betterment accounts - was able to import tax documents from another Betterment account.  I think the issue is the number of transactions on the 1099B is too much for TurboTax online (at least, that's Betterment's explanation).

[fasteddye]

I am having the same issue. Worked in previous years. Wonder if taxact will handle it.

[peterwoggle]

Same problem. Also worked for me previous years.

[ckarthiksriram]

same issue, this is ridiculous.

[peterwoggle]

I downloaded the Betterment CSV, imported into Google Sheets, and did my own filtering so I could enter all Box A without wash sales, all Box D without wash sales, and then each non-0 wash sale independently. Stole 20 mins of my time, but much faster than entering every sale individually.

[jkahn001]

What is a wash sale?  I see I have about $21 in short term wash sales disallowed (Box 1G) - what do I do with that?

[peterwoggle]

I just saw that Turbotax lets you mix entries of a summary for Box A grouped together (where there are no special exceptions, like values in 1g), another summary for Box D grouped together (again, where 1g and other special fields are 0), then individually each sale that does have special exceptions (like 1g not equal to 0). So I filtered each of those summaries and cases in a spreadsheet to compute the totals for each of those summaries. Because the vast majority of the entries had 1g = 0, I only had to enter 2 summaries + 8 individual entries (where 1g is not 0) instead of the hundreds of entries.

It looks like you can instead choose to ONLY enter two summaries, but then you also have to mail in a printout of the 1099 forms because of those special exceptions (like 1g) that you chose not to include in Turbotax.

[fasteddye]

peterwoggle, this tip was very helpful.  Did the same thing on mine.

[narwhale49]

Same problem here.  I went with TaxAct last year because of this problem.  Looks like I'll be going to TaxAct again this year.

[muditjai]

You need to create an app password in betterment and import using that. I successfully did it.

Here're the instructions https://www.betterment.com/resources/tax-software-importing/#1

[peterwoggle]

Yep, thankfully they fixed importing from Betterment this year. Last year it gave an error even with the app password.