What to Do With 1099-B?
If you sold or exchanged stocks or other assets, you may have received a 1099-B; many public companies also pay dividends and issue a 1099-DIV. You can add this to your eFile account to generate the needed forms and add it to your taxable income; eFile calculates your capital gains or losses.
Follow the steps below to report your 1099-B and let eFile generate Schedule D and Form 8949 as applicable.
2. Where Do I Enter Data?
eFile will guide you through entering all types of income; you will be prompted to enter Form 1099-B under the Investments section. Have any forms ready and enter them as they apply; answer "Yes" that you received a 1099-B to be guided through each section - you can still fill out this section if you did not get a 1099-B. If you sold multiple stocks or assets, you would need to individually report each line item since they have unique dates and descriptions.
3. How to Manually Add Data
To manually add your form, navigate to Federal Taxes > Income > scroll to the Investment section and select Tell us about your Investments and you will be prompted with this question: Did you sell any stocks, bonds, mutual funds or other investments? You can then fill out the details based on your form(s). If you sold multiple stocks or assets, you would need to individually report each line item since they have unique dates and descriptions.
4. 1099-B Box Descriptions
There are many boxes on the form and many of them are generally filled in which need to be added to your account.
1a: Description of property
1b: Date acquired
1c Date sold or disposed
1d proceeds
1e Cost or other basis
2: Checkbox for short-term, long-term, or ordinary gain or loss
4: Federal income tax withheld
6: Reported to IRS checkbox
7: Checkbox for disallowance of base amount in 1d
12: Checkbox for is the basis was reported to the IRS
14-16: state information.
5. How to Add, Delete a Form or Page
What Is Form 1099-B?
Form 1099-B is sent to you by your broker to be included with the information on your tax return. A 1099-B will itemize all stock transactions and/or sales of assets (commodities, options, etc.) that you made during the year. When you prepare your return on eFile.com, you will enter the information from your 1099-B form into your account and your gains and losses will be calculated on your return and Schedule D and Form 8949 will be generated for you as needed.
Here is the information that will be included on your 1099-B form:
- Broker's information
- Your information
- Brief description of the item sold (e.g."100 shares of ABC Company")
- Date it was bought (purchase date)
- Date it was sold
- Price it was sold at
- How much you received when you sold it
- Any resulting gain or loss
- Whether your broker withheld any federal tax.
The 1099-B assists you in reporting capital gains and losses on your tax return. Usually, when you sell something for more than it cost you to acquire it, the profit is a capital gain and it may be taxable. On the other hand, if you sell something for less than you paid for it, then you may have a capital loss, which you might be able to use to reduce taxable capital gains or other income. Capital gains are usually reported on Schedule D and Form 8949 if needed.
See also: 1099-CAP instructions or how to file rental income.
Short-term and long-term gains
Box 2 of the 1099-B form tells whether the gain or loss involved is short-term or long-term. Generally, if you owned an asset, such as stock, for a year or less before selling it, any gain or loss from a sale is short-term. If you owned it for more than a year, you would normally have a long-term gain. The distinction is extremely important, since tax rates on long-term gains can be significantly lower than those on short-term gains.
Each transaction needs to be reported on a separate 1099-B form in eFile. Any crypto currency trades would go on the 1099-B/8949 screen.
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