In article <6d9987d8-e236-4de4-82d0-103d3e58587c[at]a12g2000pro.googlegroups.com> ,
Just a User <chance2now[at]gmail.com> wrote:

- quote -

Yes.

- quote -

Almost certainly not. (If you instructed your broker to sell specific
lots at different times/prices, then you'd report actual proceeds for
each lot. But that's not the case.)

- quote -

No.

Seth

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In article <gm3jd9$on9$2[at]snarked.org> ,
"D. Stussy" <spam[at]bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:

- quote -

You keep on making up things that he never said. He wrote:

- quote -

These are the reacquisition shares, and he never said anything about
selling them.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar[at]alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

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<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

"Barry Margolin" <barmar[at]alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:barmar-BC8F62.21341231012009[at]mara100-84.onlink.net...
- quote -

Yes but in the OP's situation, he still recognizes the loss because the
wash-sale reacquisition was itself sold. It washed out.

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<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

In article
<6d9987d8-e236-4de4-82d0-103d3e58587c[at]a12g2000pro.googlegroups.com> ,
Just a User <chance2now[at]gmail.com> wrote:

- quote -

If all the shares were sold for the same price, then you received $50
for each share.

- quote -

Read publication 550. It says "Except for certain mutual fund shares,
discussed later, you cannot use the average price per share to figure
gain or loss on the sale of the shares."

So if you purchased 10 shares for $350, and 10 shares for $600, you have
a gain of $150 on the first lot, and a loss of $100 on the second lot.
If you purchased another 5 shares within 30 days of the sale, you you
have a wash sale on 5 of the shares of the second lot, so you can only
report $50 of loss, and you add $50 to the cost basis of the new shares.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar[at]alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

--
<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

On Jan 31, 1:42*pm, Barry Margolin <bar...[at]alum.mit.edu> wrote:
- quote -

Yes, that is part of the reason; also, there are fees associated with
the sale which make it harder to sell the more recent shares for a
gain. The loss is actually very small in relation to the total sale,
but it is a loss nonetheless.

- quote -

Here is where the issue comes up. I get one check for the whole sale.
The question is, if I sell, say, 20 shares (purchased at different
time for different amounts) and receive $1000 after sales fees, do I
have to report that I received $50 for each share? Or can I assign
this $1000 another way? If all the shares cost a total of $950, for
example, can I report a gain of $2.50 per share? This would require
distributing the proceeds of the sale to each share based on the cost
of that share. I have tried to look on the IRS website for a rule
pertaining to this, but it is hard to know exactly what to search for.

Thanks for all the responses so far.

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<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

In article <gm110p$a56$1[at]snarked.org> ,
"D. Stussy" <spam[at]bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:

- quote -

He wrote: "The issue that I came up against is that, because the
short-term shares tended to cost more, this results in a short-term
loss and a long-term gain." So the price was generally trending up in
the long run, but dropped a bit before he sold, so the recent shares
were sold at losses.

Since he automatically purchased more shares 2 and 4 weeks later, some
of those sales (up to the number of shares he repurchased) become wash
sales. He can't take the loss now, he has to add the disallowed losses
to the cost basis of the new shares. So his eventual capital gain is
reduced (or his eventual capital loss increased) when he later sells
those new shares.

In order to ignore the wash sale rule completely, you have to sell all
shares of the security, and not buy any new shares for 30 days. Or
don't sell any of the lots that have losses -- it doesn't matter whether
you have a net gain in total.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar[at]alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

--
<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

"Barry Margolin" <barmar[at]alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:barmar-3FD4A2.21571330012009[at]mara100-84.onlink.net...
- quote -

As for the purchases 2 and 4 weeks earlier, he sold those too - so the wash
sale washes out.

- quote -

I need a better explanation of the transactions before I can agree with
that. He said that the price of the stock was increasing, so his sales
should always be at a gain. Therefore, there's no wash sales. Even if one
lot is at a loss, it has other purchases in adjacent pay periods that are
gains that wash it out.

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<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

In article <gm06n4$sdj$10[at]snarked.org> ,
"D. Stussy" <spam[at]bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:

- quote -

That doesn't matter. It's a wash sale if you purchased shares of the
same company within 30 days BEFORE OR AFTER the sale. He purchased
shares 4 weeks before, 2 weeks before, that same week, 2 weeks later,
and 4 weeks later -- all of those are within the 30 day window
(actually, depending on the day of the week of the sale, the first or
last is probably outside the window).

- quote -

He never said he sold all his shares, but maybe it was implied by his
attempt to average everything. But even if he did, he purchased shares
2 and 4 weeks later -- those count as buy-backs, and will cause the wash
sale rule to apply.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar[at]alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

--
<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

"Barry Margolin" <barmar[at]alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:barmar-E6DF34.21491429012009[at]mara100-84.onlink.net...
- quote -

But it's not a wash sale. The holding periods were in parallel. It wasn't
a sale then buy-back because there was no buy-back.

Even if there were a wash sale in there, since he disposed of ALL of the
stock, the wash sale washes out.

- quote -

The wash sale rule doesn't apply in the first place.

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<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

In article
<0d364376-8901-42ed-a76b-9a4bf5de06f0[at]w1g2000prm.googlegroups.com> ,
Just a User <chance2now[at]gmail.com> wrote:

- quote -

Did they really purchase shares every 2 weeks? I've participated in a
number of ESOPs, and they all worked by taking cash from my paycheck
every pay period, but they only purchased the company stock once every 6
months.

- quote -

It doesn't matter whether there's an overall gain. You have to
calculate the gain or loss for each lot you purchased. TurboTax is
correct: if some of them were losses, the losses have to be deferred
because of the wash sale rules.

- quote -

For regular stock, there's no averaging method allowed. For mutual
funds you can average, although I think you still have to adjust for
wash sales -- there's no way around the wash sale rule.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar[at]alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

--
<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >

Greetings all.

I am attempting to report a stock sale which happened during 2008. It
is a sale from an Employee Stock Plan, so it consists of multiple
purchases made every two weeks over time. There is a short-term and a
long-term portion of the sale. Because the stock value was generally
rising before I sold it, the short-term shares tend to have a higher
cost than the long-term shares.

I received a 1099-B which reported the total proceeds from the sale.
In order to report this sale, I have to divide it up into two sales,
one for the short-term shares and one for the long-term shares. This
means that I have to divide up the proceeds between the two "sub-
sales". The most natural way to divide this up seemed to be to weight
it according to the number of shares involved in each "sub-sale";
i.e., short_term_proceeds = total_proceeds X short_term_shares /
total_shares and long_term_proceeds = total_proceeds X
long_term_shares / total_shares.

The issue that I came up against is that, because the short-term
shares tended to cost more, this results in a short-term loss and a
long-term gain. I tried to enter these figures (I am using TurboTax's
free online filing), and when I put in the short-term portion, it
follows up by warning me that this sale may be subject to "wash sale
rules" and asks me if I then purchased substantially similar shares.
Of course, since this is an automatic payroll deduction, I continued
to purchase shares after the sale, so I would have to answer yes to
this.

Since I don't really think that I should be declaring a loss on this
sale (because the sale resulted in an overall gain), I then wondered
if I should declare my short-term proceeds to be equal to my short-
term cost basis, and assign the remainder to the long-term portion. Or
possibly I should assign them so that I report both a short-term and
long-term gain, and weight the gain according to the number of shares
involved, similar to what I attempted to do in weighting the proceeds.

Is anyone aware of an IRS requirement to use a particular method to
assign the proceeds from this sale? If so, please point me to the
relevant area on the IRS site. If the IRS does not require a
particular method, can you recommend the one I should use? I
appreciate any assistance anyone can provide.

Tom

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<< ------------------------------------------------------- > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2007) - All rights reserved. > << ------------------------------------------------------- >