Wash sale

First of all, you don't get a choice on how to apply the wash sale. The 12/12 sale has to be applied to the 11/13 purchase and the 12/14 goes against the 11/19 sale. This is IRS regulations and can't be changed no matter what lot you thought you were designating. Second, Quicken doesn't have a way to show this easily. Personnally, I would leave it alone.

Another thought, Broker's don't download cost basis so you'll have to adjust it in TurboTax.

Using LIFO of FIFO to assign lots is at the discretion of the tax payer BUT IRS says that you must stick to the chosen method and cannot change it. For Mutual Funds one may also use average cost.

Therefore, if you have never before sold one lot of stock out of many you get to pick the method you want. But, if you did it previously you follow the method you used previously.

Eric

Sorry, but this is wrong. There is no LIFO rule for securities sales. If you do nothing, you must use FIFO. You can always designate a specific group of shares to be sold, but you must instruct your broker of your choice at the time of sale and you must receive written confirmation that he received your instructions. You can move back and forth between FIFO and designated shares as often as you wish.

If you are selling a mutual fund you have two additional choices. Single category average cost and double category average cost. In single category, you add your total purchase amounts and divide by the total number of shares to get an average cost per share. In double category, you do the same after segregating your holdings into long term and short term holdings. Once you choose an average cost basis method for a fund, you must continue to use that method for that fund. You can choose different methods for different funds.

Ira Smilovitz

Charlie,

Thank you for your response. I am not sure what you mean by saying that the sales have to be applied to specific purchases. When we look at our holdings on the Fidelity website, the lots from 11/13 and 11/19 are still there with the additional cost added, and the two earlier lots that we specified are gone. Am I missing something?

OK.

Caryl

On Dec 19, 7:27 pm, Charlie K wrote: .

Again, I am confused! Do you mean the above for all sales, or just for wash sales? Normally when we download the information from Fidelity the cost or basis is indicated if the stock has been bought through them or we have given them the cost.

Caryl

Eric,

Thank you for trying to help me. However, your information differs from what both Charlie and Ira said. We had previously sold 100 shares of this stock on 9/13/2007 and designated that it be sold from a portion of the shares bought on 6/7/2007, which at that point was LIFO. However, Fidelity did accept our designation of the recent two sales which were neither LIFO or FIFO.

Caryl

Ira,

Thanks for your response. Our trading is done online and, as stated earlier, we did dsignate two specific lots amd have confimration of these instructions. So, according to you, this is correct.

I guess I will do what Charlie suggested and not make any changes to the remaining lots on Quicken.

Caryl