Is there a way to sort stock sales by date?

[SkiGirl]

Clients moved from NY to NJ last year.  In order to finance the purchase of their new home before selling their old home, they had a ton of stock sales.  Is there a way to sort these sales by date so that they can be more easily allocated to the proper state?

[Just-Lisa-Now-]

Youd have to look at the 1099B and make a summary entry for those sold before XX date and an other for those sold after XX date, then allocate those totals to the right state.

[SkiGirl]

So there's no sort feature built into the program for the 1099-B worksheet?  All the 1099-B's have the sales listed alphabetically.  Having to sort those sales out transaction by transaction will take forever.

[IRonMaN]

Ask the client if he has monthly statements from the broker.  You should be able to see what the year to date gains and losses were before the move.

[Just-Lisa-Now-]

How about just allocate by months or days they lived in each state? 

If they lived in one state for 7 out of 12 months, just allocate 7/12th of the gain/loss to that state.

Unless their brokerage can give you a printout that's sorted by sales date.

[SkiGirl]

Thank you both.  I will ask the client to find out if the brokers can sort the transactions by date and if not I will get the monthly statements from the client.  This is going to be a challenging return.  NY and NJ will each claim residency for an overlapping period so I'm going to have to override some entries on the states part year returns.

[IRonMaN]

"If they lived in one state for 7 out of 12 months, just allocate 7/12th of the gain/loss to that state."

That works for interest on a savings account.  But with stock sales, if they had a $1,000,000 gain on January 15 and a $999,000 loss on December 15, that method isn't going to make the first state very happy.

[PATAX]

Ask the broker like Iron Man said. I'm sure they didn't work for free when they were selling all of that stock so maybe they can do a little bit of work for their client.

[SkiGirl]

Agreed.  Unfortunately, this was not a clean move.  Clients bought a NJ lake house in March with the intention of it just being a summer house, started living in the house in May but decided in June to live there full time.  Registered to vote, registered their cars and got a new dog license in June and July, but didn't move the rest of their belongings from NY until the end of September which is when they listed the NY residence for sale.  I will deal with the overlapping residency period and then after tax season strongly suggest to Intuit that the 1099-B worksheet have the ability to sort the transactions by date.

[TaxGuyBill · Accepted solution]

I've heard that some brokerages allow the client to download all transactions in CSV format.  If that is an option for your client, all you would need to do is open that up with Excel and sort by date.

[SkiGirl]

Thank you for that information.  I will ask the client to find out if his brokerage firms have that feature.