Probably old news, but it was a shock for me to find this out.
I had a tiny amount of ARKB and SGOL in my traditional IRA and an even smaller amount in my stepbrother's taxable account. Stepbrother does not need to file a 1040 because his AGI is below the standard deduction amount. But when I looked at his 1099-B I saw a zillion tiny transactions with a value of $0.00 or $0.01. Investigating this I found out that these two are structured as grantor trusts and these tiny transactions are related to my share of their selling some holdings to pay themselves fees.
This year I had one wash sale so I could not just enter the totals into Turbo Tax and had to enter every transaction line. I was planning to short term trade these ETFs, so I bought them in my IRA. Dodged the bullet on that one. Bit seeing all those tiny amount lines was a shock.
I did not get my last 1099-B until 3/11, so I am in the final double check of my Turbo Tax and close to submitting the return.
To my surprise, in the mailbox today, was an "important tax information" letter from IShares. It turns out that I bought some of the GSG ETF to get some commodity exposure. GSG is a trust and sends out a K-1 separate from the broker. News to me. And in the middle of March?
Good thing that, for some random reason, I chose to buy the commodity ETFs in my IRA. With the letter so late, I could easily have submitted my Turbo tax before the K-1 arrived. Luckily, being in the IRA, it does not affect filing.
TLDR - You probably don't want to hold this sort of stuff in a taxable brokerage account.
I had a tiny amount of ARKB and SGOL in my traditional IRA and an even smaller amount in my stepbrother's taxable account. Stepbrother does not need to file a 1040 because his AGI is below the standard deduction amount. But when I looked at his 1099-B I saw a zillion tiny transactions with a value of $0.00 or $0.01. Investigating this I found out that these two are structured as grantor trusts and these tiny transactions are related to my share of their selling some holdings to pay themselves fees.
This year I had one wash sale so I could not just enter the totals into Turbo Tax and had to enter every transaction line. I was planning to short term trade these ETFs, so I bought them in my IRA. Dodged the bullet on that one. Bit seeing all those tiny amount lines was a shock.
I did not get my last 1099-B until 3/11, so I am in the final double check of my Turbo Tax and close to submitting the return.
To my surprise, in the mailbox today, was an "important tax information" letter from IShares. It turns out that I bought some of the GSG ETF to get some commodity exposure. GSG is a trust and sends out a K-1 separate from the broker. News to me. And in the middle of March?
Good thing that, for some random reason, I chose to buy the commodity ETFs in my IRA. With the letter so late, I could easily have submitted my Turbo tax before the K-1 arrived. Luckily, being in the IRA, it does not affect filing.
TLDR - You probably don't want to hold this sort of stuff in a taxable brokerage account.
