Quote:
Originally Posted by Malachii
Hey guys -
I'm working on extending my tax return right now and I think my broker has been ****ing **** up. It looks to me like my broker has misidentified some of wash sales (i.e., flagging transactions as wash sales that shouldn't be.)
Basically, if I have a position that's a loser, I might sell half my shares in one installment and then later in the day in a second installment.
So for example:
Feb 1st: Buy x number of shares
Feb 5th: 8am: Sell x/2 shares for a loss
Feb 5th: 10am: Sell remaining x/2 shares for a loss
Based on my understanding, this is not a wash sale provided I don't buy the shares back for another 30 days, but my brokers (I use IB and Vanguard) are both flagging these as wash sales.
Has this happened to anyone else before? I don't really have time to look at this in detail, but this doesn't look correct to me. Thanks.
This happened to me last year with a different discount broker, except my buy was also split on the same day (not the same day as the sale, which was split on a different day).
In the past I could always determine which lot (first, last, lowest, highest, etc.) was being sold after the fact, when filling out schedule for taxes. However, at some point they changed that, so now I have to select which type lot (via which category) before making the sale (I wasn't aware I had to do that, so wasn't looking for that option) or else it uses my default selection (which can be changed). I don't recall being notified of this change, which sorta ticked me off (the wash sale was only ~$100), although it's possible I overlooked such notification.