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Vanguard furnishes your consolidated 1099 by February 15, not by January 31, the date your employer must meet for your W-2. Congress set the later date for brokers who report sales, and brokers may use it for every other form they bundle into the same statement.
Vanguard bundles the 1099-DIV, 1099-INT, 1099-B and 1099-OID into a single consolidated 1099.
Vanguard sends a 1099-R for a distribution from a retirement account and does not bundle it into the consolidated 1099.
When a fund reclassifies its distributions after year end, Vanguard prints a corrected 1099, and you should not read it as a sign of an error on your account.
Copy all three from the payer block on your own form. Vanguard filed those exact details with the IRS, so the IRS will match your return against them.
Vanguard changes entity names and identification numbers from time to time. A number you copy from a search result may be right for last year and wrong for this one, which is why we do not publish them.
Vanguard reissues because the funds you hold finish their own year end work after Vanguard prints the first statement.
Reclassified distributions. A fund pays you what it calls an ordinary dividend during the year, then reallocates it to qualified dividends or return of capital once it settles its final numbers. Vanguard reprints the dividend section to match, which moves income between the ordinary and qualified columns and changes the rate you pay.
Cost basis on sales. When you transfer shares in from another broker, that broker may send the basis late, incomplete or not at all, and Vanguard corrects the figure once it receives better information.
You have not filed yet. Wait until late February. Filing twice costs you twice.
You have filed and the figures changed. Send us both versions and we tell you whether the change justifies an amended return.
Four IRS forms, and four different sets of rules.
Your dividends and capital gain distributions. This is the section funds reclassify after year end.
Your interest, including interest on cash you held in the account.
Every sale you made, with cost basis where Vanguard holds it. We check this section first.
Discount you accrued on certain bonds. You owe tax on it for the year it accrues, even though Vanguard paid you no cash.
When you receive a corrected 1099, send it to us with the original. We tell you whether the change moves your tax enough to justify an amended return.
Vanguard tracks wash sales inside your Vanguard accounts. Vanguard cannot track the ones you create somewhere else.
You create a wash sale when you sell a security at a loss and buy the same or a substantially identical security within 30 days before or after that sale. Vanguard reports the disallowed amount on your 1099-B for the accounts it holds. The IRS applies the rule across every account you control:
When you buy the replacement shares in a taxable account, you defer the loss. You add it to the basis of those shares and you recover it when you sell them. When you buy the replacement inside an IRA, you do not get it back.
We reconcile every account you hold before we put anything on your Schedule D.
Vanguard reports cost basis to the IRS only for covered shares, meaning shares you acquired after the date Congress phased your security type into the rules:
On your noncovered shares, which you bought before those dates or transferred in from another broker, Vanguard leaves the basis blank or marks it as not reported. Vanguard declines to report a number it cannot stand behind, so you supply the basis yourself from your own purchase records.
File it as Vanguard sent it and you pay tax on the whole sale price as though the shares cost you nothing. Say you transferred in 500 shares you bought in 2004 for 12,000 dollars and sold them for 40,000. Leave the basis blank and you report a 40,000 dollar gain in place of a 28,000 dollar one. At a 15 percent long term capital gains rate, you hand the IRS 1,800 dollars you did not owe.
Vanguard applies a cost basis method when you sell part of a position, and you cannot change it once the trade settles.
Say you bought the same fund at three different prices. The gain Vanguard reports depends on which of those lots it counted as sold, and brokers apply a default method where you did not pick one. Check which method Vanguard applied before you accept the gain figure.
Sell the low basis lots when you meant to sell the high basis ones and you report a larger gain than you planned. You cannot reverse that at filing.
If you transferred shares in from another broker, send us the 1099-B and whatever old statements you still hold before you file.
For what you owe on investment income, see individual tax preparation. For gains on a sale, see capital gains taxation.
Credentialed preparers on every return. CPAs and Enrolled Agents, not seasonal staff.
A fixed quote before we start. You get the number up front, not an hourly meter.
Email answered within 24 hours, in filing season as well as outside it.
Send us the consolidated 1099, plus any corrected version Vanguard has sent you since.
We read the four sections separately, because we apply a different set of rules to your dividends, your interest, your sales and your accrued discount.
We verify the cost basis on every sale, starting with the shares you transferred in.
We reconcile all of your accounts for wash sales, including accounts you hold at other brokers.
We check the form against your own records before we put anything on a schedule.
We file, and we tell you whether to expect a correction before you commit to a date.
Pricing runs per return, not per form. These are the factors that set a quote, and you get the fixed number before the work starts.
“We’re going to as tax professionals be too busy in February or March, we’re going to be filing people’s taxes. So if you want to start planning you want to meet your adviser far ahead of time, especially if you know something big is happening that year.”
“This is our second time getting into Dimov tax, and the team is exceptional. When we have questions about the tax form, they provide quick explanations that help us understand the complex numbers.”
You can file from the original consolidated form. If Vanguard then corrects your dividend figures or your cost basis, you pay for an amended return in March on top of the original one in February.
We explain general rules and we are not advising you on your own situation. Your answer depends on facts we cannot see until we look at your records, so speak to a CPA before you file.
Have a CPA check the year
