Schedule B: Fill & Download for Free

A2A.It depends primarily on the nature of the investment and the length of time that the investment is held. The IRS has two publications, Publication 550 (2016), Investment Income and Expenses and Publication 551 (12/2016), Basis of Assets that cover most of the things that you need to know.Some general principles:Investment income includes interest, dividends, capital gains, and some other types of income that are less common and that are covered in the publications above.Interest income is taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. It is reported on Form 1099-INT when at least $10 is paid to you, however you must report amounts less than that.Dividend income has two categories - ordinary dividends are taxed at the same rate as ordinary income, qualified dividends are taxed at the same rate as long-term capital gains. Both types are reported on Form 1099-DIV.As long as you hold an investment, you will not be taxed on the appreciation of that investment; you are taxed only when you dispose of the investment.If an investment has appreciated in value from the time you acquire it to the time when you dispose of it, you have a gain; if it has declined in value, you have a loss.When you dispose of an investment that you have held for one year or less, and you have a gain, that gain is taxed at ordinary income rates.When you dispose of an investment that you have held longer than one year, and you have a gain, that gain is taxed at long-term capital gain rates, which are lower than the ordinary income rates.Your net investment income is included in your adjusted gross income for the purposes of determine your ordinary income bracket. So if you are single and have no other income besides investment income, but happen to have $200,000 of the latter, your base tax bracket is 33%, not zero.You can offset capital gains, and up to $3000 of ordinary income, with capital losses. Any additional capital losses that cannot be deducted can be carried over to future years.Since 2011 for most stock investments, and 2012 for mutual funds, brokers and other custodians have been required to report the basis of an investment to the IRS in addition to the proceeds you receive from the investment. This is done on Form 1099-B. Most firms now provide a combined Form 1099 that contains all of the individual forms.You report interest and dividends directly on Form 1040, or on Schedule B if you have more than $1500 of either. You report gains and losses on Form 8949 and Schedule D.Usually, if you dispose of an investment at a gain, you have to pay taxes on the gain even if the proceeds are reinvested. Most investments that individuals typically make don't qualify for like-kind exchanges that Marcos Sheldon Padilla references in his answer.

I believe it, without any quotation marks around lost. I don't consider this an amazing coincidence because I don't consider it amazing in any way. Everyone involved in management of email systems for any significant length of time has plenty of stories of lost data.I've worked as a software developer and consultant on email, collaboration and related systems for nearly 30 years, including 8 years working on email archiving technology. I've seen sloppy operations and bad technology implementations even in orgnizations that were spending millions of dollars implementing systems that are specifically designed to retain emails for compliance purposes -- and I've seen nothing that tells me that the IRS had such systems in place. I've also not seen anything that tells me that the IRS was required to have such systems in place.None of the reporting that I've seen about this issue has made any mention of archival systems. (Note: at the time I initially wrote this, there had been no reporting on the IRS's contract with SonaSoft, and even as of now that reporting does not specify the scope of the archiving that the SonaSoft contract covered. Second note: SonaSoft has now issued a release stating that their IRS contract was with one specific part of the IRS and did not cover any archiving that would have included the emails in question.) The reports only mention backups, and backups are not a substitute for archival storage. (Vice versa is also true: archives are not a substitute for backups.) Recycling of media is routine practice for backup ssystems, so unless there was an organizational mandate to use backups as a permanent archive, it's completely understandable that this was done, as has been reported.And while I'm no expert on the laws and regulations that apply to IRS records, I did a very brief bit of research on the subject a day or two ago and I believe that NARA is probably the most applicable law, and that agencies are also referred 36 CFR Chapter XII Subchapter B and a memorandum from the OMB entitled Managing Government Records Directive for guidance on managing email records. According to what I've read, there is a differentiation between treatment of permanent electronic records versus temporary electronic records. I haven't found any specific mandate under NARA that requires routine retention of all emails as permanent records. Heads of agencies are required to submit retention schedules for different types of records to the National Archives for approval, and that this process determines how long various types of information must be kept. The OMB memorandum does mention "temporary" email records as a matter of fact, but does require their retention for some period that didn't appear to be strictly defined. There is a reference to a deadline for implementation in 2016, and there is also a specific reference to a 2013 deadline by which time guidelines for managing, disposing and transferring email to the National Archives should have been issued. I haven't found those guidelines, yet, but two things stand out from what was said about them. First, disposing is mentioned, therefore it appears that there is not an assumption that all email is automatically considered a permanent record. Second, all of the dates -- including the OMB memo date, which is from late 2011 -- fall after the dates of the emails in question, so it's reasonable to conclude that rules were looser at that time than they are now.And as to why the NSA can't find them, that would be because the NSA doesn't have them. Internal emails within the IRS's systems would not have traversed any systems that the NSA would have been tapping into. Also, there's been no indication that the NSA keeps any intercepted email data for any longer than it would be of interest to them (that data center out in Utah is not nearly as big as to be able to keep everything they intercept forever, and AFAIK it's not even operating yet), and these emails would not have been of interest to them.

Both Schedule D and Form 8949 relate to reporting capital gains.Think of Form 8949 as a detailed itemization of gains from sales of capital assets, and Schedule D as a summary of all capital gains.The totals entered on Form 8949 are totaled and entered on Schedule D. (There are other forms that also contribute to Schedule D.) In the same way that the totals on Schedule D are copied to Form 1040.Most typical investors with mutual funds don’t need to use Form 8949; just write the totals for sales directly on Schedule D, lines 1a and 8a.You would use Form 8949 if:You received a 1099-B that said that your cost wasn’t reported to the IRS (typically, when you purchased the stock before 2011)You didn’t receive a 1099-B for a capital asset sale (like, if you made a profit selling a classic car or something)Your 1099-B has an incorrect basis, or requires other adjustment, like for a wash saleMaybe you just want to.