Turbotax sell-to-cover transactions and recording vested vs sold for taxes

[Anonymous]

Hello,

It looks like from the previous year (2019), the screens have somewhat changed for the interview when Turbotax is trying to figure out how many RSUs were sold for taxes (for a sell-to-cover situation) vs held.  In my situation, after automatically importing the ETrade 1099-b, I have these transaction items which are solely sales done to cover for the taxes due at vesting.  However, the Turbotax interview question is confusing me - it insists that I separate out what was sold vs sold for taxes - I know I cannot put a '0' in the 'sold' because then the SmartCheck at the end will complain I didn't put a non-zero figure.  Is it correct to simply put the same number as RSUs released and sold for taxes (to show the program that whatever number of shares were involved in this transaction were all sold for the purposes of taxes?) Is there a better way, or more accurate way in TurboTax that I'm missing?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Hi - any insights?  Thanks.

[fanfare]

the cost basis of your sold-to-cover shares is what you got them for.

After commission (if any) and fees, you would have a small loss reported on Form 8949 for this.

The taxable compensation shows on your W-2.

[Anonymous]

Thank you.  So, when entering the sale (it was automatically imported from the brokerage), why is TT asking me vesting information (asking me to separate out how many were sold, which were none versus sold for covering taxes, which is what this particular transaction is for?)  

[fanfare]

If you are still having difficulty, you may have to delete that imported transaction and enter it manually.

there are replies to other threads that go into this scenario in great detail.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Update:  I ended up going into each of the stock sales and de-selecting the "These shares were sold from an employee stock plan" (I think the new version seems to incorrectly think that all employee stock sales are 'ESPP', which requires a different type of handling than plain RSUs).  As soon as I did that, I no longer got the screens asking to enter vesting info and was able to treat the sale as any regular stock (including telling TurboTax I needed to correct the cost basis).  Thanks.