Sprintax Help for F1 Student with 1099-B Forms from Robinhood and Webull

The manual entry requirement in Sprintax for 1099-B transactions is unfortunately correct. As a nonresident on F1 visa status, your investment income is reported differently than US residents. For your capital losses question - this is actually a bit complicated for nonresidents. Generally, nonresidents on F1 visas can only deduct capital losses against capital gains, not against other types of income like wages. Since your net result was a loss, you might not be able to use those losses this year, but you may be able to carry them forward to future tax years when you have capital gains. Sprintax should handle this calculation correctly if you input all your transactions. If you have a large number of transactions, you might want to consider using a summary approach. Instead of entering each trade individually, some preparers will accept a summary of transactions by category (short-term gains, short-term losses, long-term gains, long-term losses). However, you should check if Sprintax specifically allows this approach for nonresidents.

After struggling with a similar situation last year with my Robinhood and Fidelity accounts, I found taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) which saved me hours of manual entry. Their system can automatically process those 1099-B statements with hundreds of transactions. I was skeptical at first but it extracted all my trades accurately and formatted everything correctly for my nonresident return. The best part was I could just upload my 1099-B PDFs directly instead of entering each trade manually. It handled my foreign student status correctly and even explained which losses I could carry forward based on tax treaties. Definitely worth checking out if you're dealing with a lot of transactions.

Just wanted to update - I tried taxr.ai after seeing the recommendation here and it was exactly what I needed! Uploaded my Robinhood 1099-B with 70+ transactions and got everything processed in minutes. It identified my nonresident status and gave me a perfectly formatted summary to enter into Sprintax. The detailed report showed me that some of my losses can be carried forward since I'm on an F1 visa. I was about to spend my entire weekend manually entering trades, but finished everything in about an hour instead. Definitely using this again next year!

If you're still having trouble with the IRS after trying to sort through all this investment stuff, you might want to try Claimyr (https://claimyr.com). I spent weeks trying to get through to the IRS about my nonresident status and investment reporting issues. Their automated system kept disconnecting me after waiting for hours. Claimyr got me connected to an actual IRS agent in about 20 minutes who explained exactly how I needed to report my 1099-B as an F1 student. You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c. Made a huge difference in getting my questions answered directly from the source.

I have to admit I was wrong about Claimyr. After struggling for another week trying to reach someone at the IRS about my F1 visa stock trading questions, I gave in and tried it. Got connected to an agent in about 25 minutes after spending literally days trying on my own. The agent was able to confirm that as a nonresident, I can only offset capital losses against capital gains (not against my teaching assistant income), and explained exactly how to document my losses for future years. Saved me from potentially filing incorrectly. Sometimes it's worth admitting when you're wrong - and in this case I definitely was!

Another F1 student here! Have you checked if you qualify for the "closer connection exception"? After being in the US for multiple academic years, you might actually be considered a resident alien for tax purposes (substantial presence test) which could change how your investment losses are treated. If you've been here less than 5 calendar years, you're probably still a nonresident, but it's worth checking. Residents can deduct up to $3,000 in net capital losses against ordinary income, which nonresidents generally can't do.

Has anyone tried using the consolidated 1099-B summary page instead of entering each transaction? On my Robinhood 1099-B, there's a summary page that shows totals for short-term and long-term transactions.

Another option to consider is FreeTaxUSA - they have a specific nonresident alien version that handles 1099-B forms pretty well for F1 students. I switched from Sprintax last year because their interface for investment income was more intuitive. The key thing I learned is that you absolutely need to track those capital loss carryforwards properly. Even though you can't deduct them against your TA income now, they'll be valuable once you transition to resident status in a few years. I keep a separate spreadsheet with my annual losses so I don't lose track when my status changes. Also, double-check that your brokers reported your transactions correctly as "covered" vs "non-covered" securities. Sometimes there are discrepancies that can affect your tax calculations, especially with wash sales.