TurboTax TXF specification for stock trades

For those who are looking information on the TurboTax TXF tax exchange format, scroll down...

For years, I have downloaded my stock trade information from my trading institution, manipulated it into pairs of buys and sells, and transferred that information into TurboTax. Initially, I had copy-pasted the information into the TurboTax fields. That took hours. In later years, I developed Perl and AutoIT programs that automated the data entry. (It was satisfying to sit back and watch the cursor jump from field to field and click button after button, as if I were operating the mouse and keyboard. But then, this year, changes in TurboTax prevent my AutoIT program from finding the entry fields. Ugh. Would I have to enter the data manually again? Please, no. And I do not want to pay for and manually enter stock information into Quicken.

TurboTax had an option for importing stock information. I only had to have a file in TXF format (Tax Exchange Format or Tax Export Format). Surely, TurboTax/Intuit would have some description of that file format somewhere? Nope.

I found this description on a Russian site: http://www.softhelp.ru/fileformat/txf/txf.htm . Well, that page was difficult to read, so I connected online with a TurboTax/Intuit help agent and asked where I could learn about the TXF specification. After 45 minutes, the Intuit agent reported that she and her supervisor could not find any information. Wow. I gave them the link to the web page I'd found and thanked them for their time.

I gave the web page another look and started putting the pieces together. That page describes far more finance-related details than I needed; I just wanted to know about stocks. And it turns out that the format for stocks is straightforward.

With a little bit of programming, I manipulated my stock info into this new form, and TurboTax readily imported it.

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Here is the basic form of a TXF file for stock trades.

Lines of a TXF start with single letters or with ^ or $. Start your txf file (e.g. myStocks.txf) with lines that identify the version (V) of TXF spec (036), a name (A) for your solution, the date (D) of the "export" of information to the file, and the record-ending symbol "^":

V036
AMy stock data
D 12/31/2008
^

For each stock buy/sell, provide these four lines (the N321 informs TurboTax that it's a short term trade; use N323 for long term trades):

TD
N321
C1
L1

Follow those lines with the trade description (P), the sell and buy dates (D, D), the sell and buy amounts ($, $), and the record-ending symbol "^":

P100 shares of IBM
D4/3/2008
D2/1/2008
$4000.00
$3000.00
^

I recommend that you create two dummy records and try importing your txf file into TurboTax to confirm that it works. In my experimenting, I discovered that the buy and sell rows were backwards from what I thought the spec said.

No longer that time of year

A couple of you, without prompting, recalled that I might have to disconnect my battery to fix my car radio time, what with this being Daylight Savings Time in California. Thanks for remembering the saga!

Soon after correcting my car radio clock last Fall, my car wouldn't start. Turned out I needed a new alternator, and so I replaced that. Oh, man, that was nuts. I couldn't figure out how to get the alternator out of the small opening on the top in the engine area (see D) so I tried pushing the alternator toward the ground. Great, I got it stuck down there on top of the muffler, wedged against essential tubing. (See A. And B and C serve to show just how low that part was, how close to the ground, yet blocked from removal out the bottom.) The muffler bolts were completely rusted, so I HAD to find a way to get the alternator out the top. It took a lot of wriggling, twisting, pushing to find a way to get that bulky thing out the small gap at the top, near where the alternator is normally mounted. D shows the new (smaller) alternator in place.

For relevance to the original story, note that replacing the alternator meant I had to disconnect my battery which meant I needed to find a noontime when I could disconnect it again to reset my car radio clock.

Soon after replacing my alternator, the car died again. Turned out the battery couldn't hold a charge anymore. Great. So I replaced the battery, which meant I needed to find yet another noontime when I could disconnect it again to reset my car radio clock (everyone, sing the ending "I don't know why she swallowed a fly--perhaps she'll die" and let's move on to the next verse).

In the same period, I'd yanked out Mom's car radio because all that worked was the cassette player. I found a factory 1992 radio on eBay (matching her car) and it turned out it was busted (couldn't get a cassette back out of it and mailed it back with the cassette tape). Bought a 2008 radio and connected it and could get no sound. Dug into wiring diagrams, got out the voltmeter, no luck. Tried a test familiar to speaker technicians: touch wires from a battery to the speaker wires to get a scratchy sound...and got no sound. Could all speakers really be shot? Then I thought to try the battery test on my car's speakers. The test worked on my speakers. I bought a radio wire harness from BestBuy and hooked it up and heard a car radio in my car for the first time in, what, 6 years?

I set the time correctly on the radio via the radio buttons--without disconnecting the battery--wow, what a thought. Coincidentally, it was just a few minutes before midnight.

But I had hooked up the radio in haste; I didn't have the necessary mounting gear to fit it properly in the different-sized hole in the dash. While the radio played, I shoved the radio further into the dash. I heard a fzzt sound over the speakers. Some kind of wiring issue. Made me nervous. Disconnected the radio so I could think about it.

Drat, now the clock was off again.

I bought the necessary mounting hardware on eBay, got the radio all wired up properly and got the radio in place. I set time.

"Now what?" My dash lights behind my speedometer went out. I checked the fuses and found one was fried. I checked the fuse for the radio; it was fine.

Darn it, unplugging the radio fuse reset the clock.

I've become quite adept at setting the new car radio's clock. I can set it in under 3 minutes in the comfort of the car interior, while enjoying the sound of the radio.

And so ends an era of touching stories about battery cables and Daylight Savings Time and my car radio clock.

The dash lights are still out.

Much better than oink

A Russian family was visiting. Something I might ask someone of another language is what sound a cat makes or a cow or a rooster, just to find out what they say in their language. American English might say meow, moo and cocka-doodle-do while Chinese might say neow for the cat, etc. So, I asked the Russians about pigs. I illustrated that Americans might say "oink oink" for the pig sound. They laughed at the oddity. They said pigs said "nif nif" (or, if you're familiar with German, it's more like nöf nöf), which make us laugh. I said we had a story of the Three Little Pigs. They conferred with each other and responded that, oh, that story was called Nöf Nöf, Nof Nof, and Nuf Nuf, which made us laugh even more. On reflection, Nöf Nöf makes a LOT more sense than oink.