Rant: the spread sheet my broker gives me is basically useless for taxes

I downloaded the annual summary from my broker in March and took it to my accountant in Dayton, she laughed and said I'd need to rebuild half the cost basis entries myself. Turned out their report mixed up wash sales and dividend reinvestments in two accounts, so my capital gains number was off by roughly $1,900. Has anyone else had to manually fix their broker's tax forms, or is this just the norm with smaller firms?

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1 Comment

angelacooper2d ago

And here I thought the whole point of paying an accountant was for them to figure out the messy stuff. A $1,900 swing sounds annoying, but is it really worth rebuilding half the spreadsheet yourself? I just sort the PDF by date and let the tax software handle the rest. If the math is off by that much, I'd blame the accountant for not catching it sooner, not the broker's summary.