Reconciling Brokerage 1099-B - is there such a thing as close enough?

"GSalisbury" wrote

That's a tad outside of just a rounding error.

You need to figure it out. It's probably a grouping of fractional shares on splits, spins, mergers, etc.

does your advise assume a certain level of total income shown on the 1099B? If it were $1M, would you say $129 is close enough? Just curious how these things are handled. I've never been so far off as $129, but at some point for a couple of taxable years, I just threw in the towel.

On Tue, 1 Apr 2008 13:10:04 EDT, "Gil Faver" for a couple of taxable years, I just threw in the towel.

The IRS has a threshhold amount, but they won't come out and say what it is; I've heard $50 and $100, both from people in a position to know. The IRS compares your return to the 1099s and if it's within the threshhold amount, then it's close enough. If it's not within the threshhold amount, then it is not close enough. It does not depend on the level of total income as far as I know.

"Gil Faver"

It is based on the fact that the IRS will get a total gross sales on the B that is $129 more than the shown gross proceeds listed on the D.

I'm quite sure the computer will catch that one.

It's not when the computer is looking for gross of $1,000,129.

Would you do that on the W-2? Just round off to the nearest grand?

Dang! I kinda expected that I'd have to chase after kind of the difference but... I was hoping maybe to get some sort of a free pass - you know "take a chance..." Oh Well. It's just a couple of hundred lines on both the 1099 and the Qkn Report - can knock that out in a couple of days Thx. Geo.

GSalisbury wrote: ...

Frankly, unless I were convinced the brokerage was in error and were going to contest their 1099 number, I'd probably simply fudge one or two trades to match it unless it became obvious after a relatively short time--the amount of difference in taxes has to be $20 or so, max.

IIF (if and only if) I were completely done w/ the whole return otherwise and had time to kill would I bother more -- but then again, I'm not a pro, either, just pragmatic and willing to bend where it seems there's nothing to be gained otherwise... :)

you could just use the higher number on the 1099, and save yourself the trouble. Of course, you won't. Neither would I. But we COULD . . .

[...]

The thread has gone off on a discussion of rounding errors and what the IRS considers de minimis on a 1099-B.

I would track back and ask, what is the "it" that you are able to reconcile within $129? The gross proceeds reported on 1099-B? The net proceeds reported on 1099-B? The Quicken TXF file? (not an official IRS reporting document, by the way). Are commissions and transaction costs being properly accounted for?

It is rare that you can't match the sales price number reported on

1099-B, although I have seen one case from a major brokerage (with assistance from a colleague) where a single transaction was reported in the brokerage detail both as a short term with zero gain/loss and a long term with the actual gain/loss. It wasn't until the double entry was eliminated that the numbers matched up.

-Mark Bole

[snip]

The "it" reconciled so far was the gross on the 1099 to the "gross" reported and extracted from Qkn. I haven't yet matched the detail of the 1099 to the detail from Qkn. That's what I looking to duck - there's enough of them that my eyes are glassy before starting. The Qkn numbers agree within the Tax Summary and Capital Gains Reports and the TXF import into TaxCut agrees with them - they all better sync up otherwise I don't even want to think about it. I suspect that we lost some d/l'ing sometime during the year. We connect to d/l nearly every day. There had to be issues connecting etc. at least once - there always is - so maybe a line got lost. Geo.

"Gil Faver" >>

Although, as was noted concerning the minimal impact and also being pragmatic (I call it lazy), I would like to do nothing but I know I can't

I just hope matching a Qkn Report to the 1099 detail is all I have to do - not travel thru twelve months of statements - that would be a pain. Geo.

Can't you paste a Quicken [note tht I ws abl 2 dfr yr stct] report into a spreadsheet sorted by date to produce a running total, do the same with the schedule from your broker, and see where the totals diverge?

Otherwise, consider adding an extra item schedule D labeled as "Cash in lieu" with a Various acquisition date for the difference. There is a fair chance that CIL was where the difference came from anyway.

This is a good idea and I can see how it would make it easier to narrow the focus. Unfortunately, for me, the brokerage schedule is only in paper form on the

1099 detail. Their site doesn't have a d/l of it other than an image PDF.

If I can't somehow spot the difference by eyeballing the two documents and crossing off matches then I'll probably just go ahead and do the add something route - the tax difference too me would be in the noise. Thx

You can often do a text copy from the PDF. Then paste into your spreadsheet. If pasting into Excel, do the special paste as text. This may or may not be formatted well enough to work with.

Should be able to save the pdf to a file and then import that file into a spreadsheet as a text file I'd think...

But, being (the engineer) who suggested the pragmatic approach, that's getting to the point of effort that for $20 or less I'd probably think my time more entertainingly spent elsewhere... :)

I agree! Time spent ensuring that my preferred brewery remained productive is more worthy.

"Gil Faver"

I tracked it down to a single line in Qkn that WAS dl'ed from the broker but was "mis-coded" in Qkn so it wasn't included in the Qkn Cap Gains TXF. Once I corrected the shares buy/sell history in Qkn the item was corrected to a Sell and everything matched - the Qkn Cap Gain agrees with the Broker

1099B. phew! Thx for all of the ideas. Geo.