Turbo tax says I must mail Form 8453. 8453 wants me to attach Form 8949. One of my sales on Form 8949 says see attached statement.....do I need to attach a statement?

[drennman]

Thanks for the help.  I did mail the forms.

This raises the question as to why TT required this.

I have no summarized transactions.  None.  Checked and double checked that TT didn't summarize something on the 8949.  All transactions on 1099-Bs submitted to IRS.

So I conclude that:

1.  This is a TT bug; and/or

2.  TT is somehow summarizing transactions when prepping for an e-file even though I didn't; and/or

3.  TT (which would also be a bug) is choking on the valid entry of various for Purchase Date and deducing wrongly that this signifies a summarized transaction.  

I have also seen some answers suggesting that if you didn't summarize transactions and all 1099-Bs have been sent to the IRS to ignore the 8453 and do nothing.   Some answers say to send the 8453 with 8949s and some to send the 8453 with 8949s and 1099-Bs.  Thereby increasing confusion. 

I have no way of knowing which is true but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it is a TT bug that should be fixed ASAP.

And TT should publish the right answer and make it clear to TT users what needs to be done.  As well as how to avoid this issue in the first place.  

[AmyC]

If you had a wash sale or other adjustment, you also have to send the 8453. Most summarized transactions require it, as you know.

In the mailing instructions we provide inside the program, it says:

NOTE: Any sales summaries that include only Box A or Box D sales, and which have no adjustments to gain/loss, do not need to be included on a statement mailed to the IRS.

@drennman

[drennman]

Thanks, Amy!

I do see that form 8453 will be required if you make adjustments to cost basis which would include the case of a wash sale.   Good to point that out for this thread.

Just to further clarify:   I had no adjustments of any kind, no wash sales, just plain vanilla non-summarized transactions. 

I am still left with the conclusion - at least in my case - that this is a bug in TT.   I can't say what triggered it,  I only have a guess.

Though clearly posting the reasons like summarization of transactions and adjustments to cost basis will help people understand what the legitimate triggers will be.  And to reduce confusion also posting what documents people need to send via paper will help as there are conflicting answers.   Thanks.

[xuerong1]

You can e-file.  In my case, 1099-B is the supporting document of 8949. 8949 is on the list in 8453.

[skamcdkj]

As I was completing the filing of my 2020 federal tax return, I received the message to mail in the Form 8453 with the following box checked.

Neither while completing the tax form nor during the numerous times I ran reviews did I receive a prompt to complete Form 8949.  TurboTax has always done that for me.  I have always electronically filed all my tax forms; and have been during so since I was a Beta tester for TurboTax many years ago.

This is the first time that I am disappointed in TurboTax performance. Please correct the problem.

[drennman]

skamcdkj

Yes, there are a number of TT problems that many have run into that TT has not addressed or fixed.  Many of us have spent countless hours of frustration due to them.  

I can't say exactly what is causing your 8949 e-file problem but I can give you some things to check.

To see what I am suggestion you will need to Go To Forms.  If you either manually entered or imported sales transactions from your broker, you will see a Form 1099-B Worksheet for each broker.  Check it out, does it look right to you after comparing it to the 1099-B you actually received from your broker?

This worksheet populates the 8949 form(s) automatically (you may see more one 8949 but that is a function of whether the sales are long or short and whether or not the cost basis was reported to the IRS).  You can not enter any information directly on form 8949.   So you may find that you have 8949's even though you never completed them.  If so, you can print those and attached them to the 8453. Job done!

The second question is to why the 8453 gets generated in the first place.  In this thread you will find that under some circumstances you can "aggregate" a number of sales transactions into one.  In this case the e-file option instructs to send the actual individual transactions to the IRS.  However, this seems odd since the IRS already has the 1099-B from your broker.   But whatever.   

Many other people who did indeed list all the individual transactions and see them on the 8949s also get this same message.  One condition as you can see above is if you made any corrections to basis. If you did then again you get the 8453 to send in the 8949s.

I also received the 8453 to send in the 8949s.  But of course the 8949s where part of my e-file so this seems like potentially another instantiation of a TT error.  In my case, I was concerned that TT in it's e-file process condensed or aggregated data.  I have no way to verify what exactly TT e-filed.  If they did something that changed the 8949s that's a big bug.  But it's not clear.  So even though everything was clean on my 8949s (no aggregate transactions and no change to basis) I still got the message.   So TT is flagging something that it shouldn't.  Anyway, I sent (another copy) of the 8949s with the 8453.  Job done too.  

I'd wish TT would fix this stuff.  But in the meantime check if you have 8949s and send them as instructed with the 8453.   IMO it's the fastest and easiest solution.

[EPX]

I believe all tax software does the same thing.  The reason is Form 8949 is a stand alone form, without requiring back up paperwork, if there are no adjustments to be made that would require to then mail in Form 8453 and summary statements.  You can file Form 8949.  But if there are adjustments that meet the criteria, you have to mail Form 8453 and summary documents.  The only exceptions to this are certain entities such as corporations, partnerships, etc.  Hope this clears it up.  I do agree that if you are going to have to mail Form 8453 and summary documents, you may as well just send in the whole tax form with your trip to the post office, and forget electronic filing.  Also with some people actively day trading securities, this can amount a mountain of papers.  Hopefully the IRS will change this method in the future.

[jlaker66]

This tripped me up too, so I'm glad I found this thread.  I was one click away from my federal e-file, when I decided to do one last sanity check of the return, so I saved it off in a .pdf.  I saw the note about having to send paper forms, which I didn't want to do.  In my case, I had used the summary option to cover a single sale of one particular stock which was acquired over different purchase dates.

So, I switched away from the summary option, and submitted the 12 different purchases as separate transactions, and then the request to mail a paper form went away.  That part all worked good.

What didn't work so good was when I modified that single summary entry to be the first of the 12 separate purchase line items, TT got all confused, and it flagged a bunch of (incorrect) issues at the final re-check.  I needed to delete that first entry (formerly summary entry), and re-enter it.  Must have been something on that record (not visible to me) that was still tagging it as a summary.

Thanks.

[Checkers2]

I've just now run into the same problem as everyone else here.  I did summarize my brokerage transactions on form 8949, and some of them included data that was not given to the IRS by my broker (it says that on my 1099B).  So I understand why the IRS might want more details than a simple summary number. 

But my complaint is that the first time I saw any notification of this situation was AFTER I had already e-filed.  Couldn't there be a notification/warning about it while entering form 8949 data into Turbotax, which I did weeks ago and assumed everything was ready to file?  

And who knows if I'm also supposed to mail the same supporting docs to my state???  (At this point it ain't happening.)

[Mr_Raja]

As long you use the summary method to enter ONLY the proceeds  and cost bases and determine yourself whether it's Long term or short trem than you'll have to mail the forms 8453, Sch D and the supporting documents to Austin Tx. So, before efiling I changed from summary --> to details and entered the company name, date acquired, date sold and state where company is located. After entering the details there was no need to mail the supporting documents to the IRS. Thanks to previous comments I was able to resolve my issues.

[sberant]

I also fell into this trap.  I already submitted my taxed electronically using the summarized version on submitting stock sales.

1) Can I resubmit my taxes and switch to submitting each transaction so I don't have to send in 8453 and 8949 forms along with 1099-B? 

2)  If not.  Do I need to mail in 1099-B along with 8453 and 8949 forms?  TT doesn't say to send 1099-B?

thanks

[drennman]

You can always file an "amended" return but I am not sure the effort would be worth it IMO.  I suggest you just send the 8453 with whatever 8949s TT created.  If your transactions were reported on a 1099-B you do not have to send those with your Forms to the IRS Austin TX address.   You are correct the 8453 says to send the 8949s (not 1099-Bs)

This is IMO the simplest way out of the problem.  Unless you have pages and pages of 8949s (mine where just 2 so three pages which is just an ordinary 1st class stamp and dropped in a mailbox).

[drennman]

PS if you fully summarized transactions, if it were me I would go back into TT and complete the 8949s.  Because TT wouldn't have populated them with individual transactions. You could likely use the Import function populate the 8949s to make it easier.

[Checkers2]

sberant, my guess is resubmitting isn't an option.  I'd go with what you said in #2.    I sent them 3 relevant pages out of my 43 page 1099-B.  I think my problem was triggered by a K-1 which gave a different basis than the 1099-B, but I don't really know except I'm pretty sure my K-1 data is messed up and TT isn't too useful.  I figure if the IRS doesn't like what I sent them, they can ask for more, or send me a bill, or KMA.

[swapnizzle]

+1 about warning the users that they will need to print and email their 1099-B if they used the summary method!! This is a big pain.