Question

Short sales of options sold in 2020 and closed by purchase in 2021

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
February 13, 2022
1 reply
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I am unable to enter short sales transactions because Turbo Tax does not allow me to enter a sales date prior to January 1, 2021.

What good is Turbo Tax if I cannot enter all of my transactions?

Is there a work-around for this, or is Turbo Tax going to update their program?

Am I really the only user who sells short?

M

Mike9241

what version of Turbotax are you using? I have desktop deluxe and have no issue entering an option sale with a sales date in 2020 and a purchase date in 2021.

fanfare

Employee

In order to close a short you must go to the market and acquire some securities, in this case, some options.

The acquired date is the date you closed the short sale.
For Stocks, the disposed date is two business days later (settlement).
Options settle in one day.

Note to those for whom it is not obvious: Date Acquired and Date Disposed refer to Columns (b) and (c) on Form 8949 that you will report to the IRS.
Your trade date is the date you closed the position and goes in (b). Settlement date must be calculated taking into account weekends and market holidays.

If an option that was granted (written) expired, enter the expiration date in column (b) and enter “Expired” in column (e).

From this you can see that a short is always a short term capital gain or loss, no matter how long you are short.