Yes, if the investment portfolio was trading on your behalf then a wash sale could occur. The wash sale rules are posted for you to help understand how it works. It can be difficult to track if this is your situation but the plan administrator should always mark these for you if the funds remain with the same company.
Wash sales cannot be combined into section totals. They should be entered individually so that you can track your cost basis and know when you are allowed to use the information on a final sale.
Wash Sale Rule Defined:
- A wash sale occurs when an investor sells or trades a security at a loss, and within 30 days before or after, buys another one that is substantially similar.
- It also happens if the individual sells the security at a loss, and their spouse or a company they control buys a substantially similar security within 30 days.
- The wash-sale rule prevents taxpayers from deducting a capital loss on the sale against the capital gain of other stock.
Affect on Cost Basis:
- The loss that occurs on a wash sale is added to the cost basis of the shares purchased that created the wash sale.
- When all shares are sold and there is no repurchase, that increased cost basis will be used in full and used to determine gain or loss.
As long as you are tracking the wash sales and are not using them on the tax return when you are not allowed, then you can simply enter the same cost basis as the selling price. This will reconcile your tax return with your Form 1099-B Proceeds which is what the IRS is comparing.
Wash Sale ends:
The wash sale disallowed is not added to the net gain/loss rather it is adjusted and suspended so that it does not affect the total gain or loss for any pending wash sales. The rub is that the broker only knows when a wash sale occurs, not when a wash sale no longer exists. This can spill over between two tax years. Likewise you can have a wash sale during a tax year, and then fully dispose of the stock in the same year which would eliminate the wash sale rule for the final sale of the same stock.
It's up to you to know when you no longer have to consider the wash sale rule.
Example:
X bought 5 shares of ZZZ stock, at $5 per share, then sold it for $3 per share, however immediately before the original 3 shares were sold, X bought another 5 shares at $5.00 per share.
$25 for the first block of shares
15 is the proceeds creating a $10 loss
The $10 loss is now added to the cost of the new shares for an overall cost basis of $35.
Once the second block of shares is sold (5 shares with cost basis of $30) without any repurchase with in the 60 day window (30 days before or 30 days after the sale), and if they are sold at a loss, then no wash sale exists on the sale, and a loss is allowed.
