How do I figure tax forms with Sharebuilder stocks?

Yes, it is confusing.

That's the rub. It is a lot of work, but you have to report each purchase separately with the date of purchase, number of shares and fraction of shares purchased, and price of the shares purchased. The sale price should be the same for all shares of the same company if you sold them all at the same time, otherwise you have to figure this on a first in, first out basis. The total of all shares sold should equal the total of all shares purchased, each "lot" with it's own basis and capital gain (or loss). Also and stock that was purchased within one year of the sale has to be reported as short term capital loss or gain, but TurboTax will figure that out if you have entered each date of purchase and sale. As I said in another thread, I use Quicken to keep a running track of all stock purchases and reinvestments, then at tax time a capital gains report can be imported directly into TurboTax which takes all (or most - still have to enter the data into Quicken) of the work out of it.

After you have inputted all of the data, TurboTax will add up all of the gains and subtract all of the losses and then you will know if you will owe additional tax or have a loss.

You would input these the same as above but instead on a single sale date there would be several and you are correct that you need to account for each sale and the stocks the represent that sale are on a first in, first out basis.

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-Ernie-

No you don't. You only have to split them into long-term and short-term sales, and report each SALE separately within those sections. You can enter "various" for the purchase date, and add up all the purchase prices and gross proceeds of the sales.

-- Barry Margolin, snipped-for-privacy@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA

There's actually an easier way. According the to the Schedule D instructions: If you sold a block of stock (or similar property) that you acquired through several different purchases, you may report the sale on one line and enter "VARIOUS" in column (b). However, you still must report the short-term gain or (loss) on the sale in Part I and the long-term gain or (loss) in Part II. So, rather than entering each of these transactions separately on Schedule D, you can enter the sale for each security as one transaction (or two transactions if you had both long term and short term holdings). Enter the total basis you had in the security in column (e), enter the total proceeds in column (d), the date sold in column (c), and "various" in column (b).

--Chris