Selling Options showing $0 Gain/Loss When Entering into Turbo Tax

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
April 15, 2022
1 reply
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I am reviewing all of my stock/options trades to ensure dates/gains or losses look correct and I am noticing if I properly fill out my short sold option contract (put or call) transaction it shows a $0 P/L. As shown below.

For this transaction (and all others like it) I am entering them as "options" in the investment type column, providing a proper open/close date, and stating they expired rather than sold. Since these are short options, expiring worthless means I win money. However, when selecting the "expired" option, not "proceeds" box is available, only "cost basis" and if I enter a cost basis as $82 or some other number it gives me a Loss on the option, when I did not lose. If I put -$82 it gives an error message.

Any tips? Should I be categorizing this just as a "Stock (non-employee)" or what?

TurboTax Self Employed Online

G

GeorgeM777

Because these are short option trades, if you let them expire worthless (and it appears you have), then report the basis as 0, and report the premium you received when you sold the put or call as your sales proceeds. You can continue to report the trades as option trades, but if you follow the aforementioned advice, you should get a description dissimilar to the one you posted, in that the description will properly reflect your gain and cost basis.

Reporting the options as Stock (non-employee) will also work.

@5004053

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