Tax Cut question for investors

Hi, Willie.

Is there an echo in here?

Didn't we just hash this out a week or two ago?

RC

Tax Cut has a Capital Gains and Losses Worksheet where you enter each transaction, date acquired, date sold, sales price and cost. You can take the sum of the sales price at the bottom of the form and compare that with what your broker provided on Form 1099-B.

As I recall, Tax Cut has always used this approach.

Let's try this again - The interview process DOES ask you to enter information from your 1099-B with specific box instructions in TT 2008 as long as you indicated you sold mutual funds or stocks. As R.C. White indicatred, REREAD the thread. We already discussed this.

Look at the subject. In this thread, he asked about TaxCut, not TT 2008.

Good point! I guess I answered the wrong question. My very bad.

Andrew is right: you are mistaken. The topic of the thread is not material.

Let me quote from the original post.

"I have used TurboTax for several years and I always entered the info from tha 1099-B and it compared the number there to the total on the Schedule D and it had to match.

This year there is no place to enter that info from the 1099-B and after a couple of hours on the phone with support and them checking with supervisors ... they keep telling me it isn't necessary to enter that info anymore and there is no place to do so. On the form list where it mentions

Alll of that post clearly pertains to Turbo Tax ... not to Tax Cut. [Unless the op says otherwise ... which would destroy the entire thrust of the original post.]

As I read this thread, Andrew continually responded to the original clam about how Turbo Tax performed.

Yes, Taxcut 2007 (Premium+State is what I have) does provide for entry of some info from a 1099-B. No doubt just like TT it is keyed to a "Yes" answer of a "Sale of stock etc?" question.

That being the case (again no doubt just like TT) you can then enter the detail lines for the sales.You don't enter any of the summary/identification info - just the transaction lines. Basically you are filling in the Schedule D and D-1's if your number of lines overflows the form.

I've never used TT but I have to believe it is the same - why/how could it be any different? The other thread said as much.

You can import your capital gains info from your Quicken or MS Money or whatever but you're virtually guaranteed to have to reconciled it within TC - just like the other thread on TT indicated.

No TC (nor TT I'm sure) does not compare 1099-B to Schedule D - there's really very little to compare.

I'm not a tax guy but the 1099-B (just like any other 1099) isn't an "official" form that gets filed by the taxpayer (and yes I appreciate an exception might be if taxes were withheld). It is an advice to the IRS from the seller saying "we produced the amount of 'income' look for him to account for it on his filing".

Either program could ask for the box-2 total shown on the 1099-B and then tell you if your Schedule D entries agree or not - but they don't get over it. It's plenty easy enough to look at the line 3 and 10 amounts on the Schedule and see if they total to the 1099. That's the least of the effort.

"Andrew" wrote in news:47b4fa17$0$25041$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:

===============Mind didn't.

And the support people at TT can't find anyplace to enter the info and their supervisors say you don't have to anymore.

This is one of the things that confuses me and why I am still asking the question.

You say it does ... TT support people say it doesn't .. and mine didn't.

But I believe it should. There is no possible way for them to guarantee accuracy if they don't compare what you input into the Schedule D with what your broker reports on the 1099-B.

Since yours gave you the opportunity to input the info ... why didn't mine?

Why do TT support people and their supervisors claim you don't have to?

"John Pollard" wrote in news:5h7tj.34117$9j6.12932@attbi_s22:

=============Right, I asked Tax Cut users and explained why I was asking ... because I am not satisfied with the run around I am getting from TT support.

TT users here report that they did enter 1099-B info but my TT did not give me the opportunity nor can I find a way to do so..TT support claims it is no longer necessary to enter that info.

I don't believe that.

Thus, I was asking Tax Cut user about their experience...thinking I might go buy Tax Cut if it has entry forms for the 1099-B brokers info.

"GSalisbury" wrote in news:EpadneSH3fkpPCjanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

===============You're right, I can manually compare ... but the point is the program always did it in the past and should still compare in order to be sure the filer is filing an accurate return.

I'm thinking I may start a new return from scratch and go through the interview process.

This time I chose to bypass the interview and go to the stuff I knew I needed and one of the first things I did was import my trade data from my Tradelog program which downloads all trades from the broker and analyses them for wash sales etc. etc. and prepares a .txf file to import into either TT or Tax Cut for your Schedule D.

Maybe having imported data already caused the program to bypass asking for info on the 1099-B but it shouldn't and TT support people claim that entering the info isn't necessary anymore.

Thus I am confused, and not satisfied with the answers I have gotten from TT.

Not trying to be a pain in the ass with this issue ... I just haven't been able to resolve it to where I am satisfied with the answers yet.

Especially because some people here claim they DID enter 1099-B info into TT yet mine not only didn't ask for it .. I can't find a place to do it, and TT people say there is no place for it because it is no longer necessary which makes no sense to me at all. The broker doesn't go to the trouble and expense of compiling the info and printing the forms and sending them to me and the IRS just for the hell of it.

Is there something wrong with my way of doing things?

I keep track of trades and current prices in Quicken to get a feeling of my financial situation. I try to get accurate info into Quicken, which isn't always easy because capital gains are sometimes reported as "dividends" by Vanguard, Fidelity etc.

For my taxes, I go first by all the 1099 forms, because I once did not, and the IRS caught me. Explaining it was fine, but cost nerves and time, since it was a question of over 10K in 1985 or so. Big money for me then.

So, I follow the 1099s, and use my buy and sell and costs data.

Taxcut has the "forms" in interview format to input the data for each security.

OK -So let me try this - (and I'm speaking of TT, not Tax Cut!). Entering the data into a TT form that looks like a 1099-B is only half the battle. As I said earlier, there is a location during the interview process that asks you some specific questions relating to your 1099-B form that is needed for the tax return. But that is only half the battle - other items ALSO mandatory for the return are NOT on the 1099-B (Like what type of gain, the basis, the date(s) you purchased the securities you're recording a capital gains (hopefully positive on), and so on.)

So simply entering data from the 1099-B (unlike the W2, I think) doesn't cut it (no pun intended). You have to be also entering a lot of other data that you need to get independently of the 1099-B..

I can't swear that I've NEVER seen a direct 1099-B form in TT (as I'm not been so lucky to record sales of securities every year), but I for one can't remember ever seeing one in the past. Nor have I ever thought this was any sort of 'bug'.

I think by entering the data in the interview form (And you can probably go OPEN MY RETURN and doing it direct anyway) and then comparing the final generated Sch D vs. the 1099-B and your other information you needed for Sch D, you should get a good sense of security.

It's hardly worth (IMNSHO) a switch to Tax Cut JUST for this one issue if that's what you're contemplating.

Hope this all helps.

(And John P, if you've read this far, thanks for the other post on my behalf. But I indeed did miss read the 2nd OP me thinks!)