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ESPP Purchase Lot - Keeps Saying 'Invalid Number' or 'You Must Fix Errors'

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 6, 2019
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I'm trying to enter purchase lots for a sale of ESPP stock and can't get past whatever calculation check Turbo Tax is doing on one entry...

The actual values, due to splits, are this:
$28.225 - Market Price on Grant Date
$30.555 - Market Price on Purchase Date
$25.97175 - Price Paid per Share

But if I put these in, TurboTax will flag the price per share (25.97175) as an 'Invalid Number'. I figured it just wanted things rounded up, but that doesn't seem to work.

The following numbers will go in without an 'Invalid Number' flag, but then when I click to continue it says 'You must fix errors on this page' without giving any hint where or what the errors are...

For reference, these don't work:
28.23
30.56
25.97

I've also tried every variation of rounding up 25.97175, decimal by decimal - again, no dice.

I assume it's just doing a calculation to make sure that the price paid matches the discount (15% in my case), but even if I try to fudge things to get that to work (30.56 * 0.85 = 25.976 for a purchase price) I'm still stuck with the infuriatingly unspecific 'You must fix errors...'

Any ideas? I've entered other lots just fine, but I'm unable to do anything more at this point...

TurboTax Premier Online

Best answer by darrengreed

Hi Tom, thanks for taking a look at this.

I think I've figured it out. You're correct that I'm using the online tool. It seems to only accept 4 decimal places for the 'Price Paid per Share' and it also doesn't want this number to be rounded correctly, simply for you to drop any digits after the fourth.

So today, entering 25.97175 gave the same 'Invalid Number' flag; however, entering 25.9717 made it happy.

I can't say for sure that I didn't try this last night, so it could just be a waiting-game issue, but I've confirmed on two subsequent lots that it refuses anything beyond 4 decimal places and also refuses any normal rounding of the decimals up to 4.

Thanks again for taking a look!

T

TomYoung

Employee

Hmmm... Using the desktop product I entered 2 sales for 10 shares each at a price of $40 per share and used your numbers and had no problem. Why don't you detail every single element of what you're entering: all the line items entered on the 1099-B input forms, all the bits and pieces of your Form 3922 entries. Maybe it's an "online" issue and I'll have to ask some SuperUser that has an online account to try this.

D

darrengreedAuthorAnswer

Hi Tom, thanks for taking a look at this.

I think I've figured it out. You're correct that I'm using the online tool. It seems to only accept 4 decimal places for the 'Price Paid per Share' and it also doesn't want this number to be rounded correctly, simply for you to drop any digits after the fourth.

So today, entering 25.97175 gave the same 'Invalid Number' flag; however, entering 25.9717 made it happy.

I can't say for sure that I didn't try this last night, so it could just be a waiting-game issue, but I've confirmed on two subsequent lots that it refuses anything beyond 4 decimal places and also refuses any normal rounding of the decimals up to 4.

Thanks again for taking a look!