Your broker can't see your other accounts. The IRS can.
By the Wash-Sale Guardian team · Published 2026-07-12 · Last updated 2026-07-14 · How we check our facts
Short answer: yes, the wash-sale rule applies across all your accounts. Under IRC §1091, the rule attaches to you the taxpayer, not to any one account. Sell at a loss at Schwab and re-buy at Robinhood eleven days later? Wash sale. Your IRA's auto-invest buys it back? Wash sale — a permanently unrecoverable one. Your spouse re-buys it and you file jointly? Also a wash sale, per IRS Publication 550. Meanwhile, no broker will ever warn you, because no broker can see the others.
Does the wash sale rule apply across brokerage accounts?
Yes. IRC §1091 disallows a loss when you acquire substantially identical stock or securities within 30 days before or after the loss sale — a 61-day window counting the sale day — with no account limitation whatsoever. The statute speaks of the taxpayer's acquisitions, full stop. The 61-day window spans every brokerage account you own, your traditional and Roth IRAs (Rev. Rul. 2008-5), and, per Pub 550, accounts of your spouse when you file jointly and corporations you control.
Do brokers track wash sales across accounts?
No — and they legally can't be expected to. Under the broker-reporting regulations (Treas. Reg. §1.6045-1), a broker adjusts for wash sales only when the loss and the replacement involve identical securities (same CUSIP) in the same account. Schwab's own investor education says exactly this. Your 1099-B reflects that narrow view and nothing more; TurboTax and other consumer software then take 1099-Bs largely at face value. The cross-account violation is invisible at every step — see what box 1g actually covers.
| Scenario | Your broker flags it? | IRS counts it? |
|---|---|---|
| Sell + re-buy, same ticker, same account | Yes (1099-B box 1g) | Yes |
| Sell at broker A, re-buy at broker B | No — neither broker can see it | Yes |
| Sell in taxable, re-buy in your IRA | No — and the loss is gone permanently | Yes (Rev. Rul. 2008-5) |
| Sell yours, spouse re-buys theirs (joint filers) | No | Yes (Pub 550) |
| Sell stock, buy a call option on it (any account) | Rarely | Yes — §1091(a) covers "a contract or option to acquire" |
The 61-day window, visualized
Buy substantially identical shares anywhere in the red zone and the loss is disallowed. Day +31 is the first safe re-buy date — the exact date our checker shows per ticker.
The three ways it happens to real people
- The two-broker dip-buy. You harvest a loss in your "serious" account, then your fun-money account buys the dip nine days later. Two apps, zero warnings, one disallowed deduction.
- The IRA auto-invest. Your IRA's scheduled purchase or dividend reinvestment buys the ticker you just harvested. Per Rev. Rul. 2008-5 the loss doesn't defer — it evaporates, and it shows up on no form either custodian sends you. Full explainer.
- The spouse's account. Married filing jointly makes their re-buy your wash sale. Almost nobody tracks this by hand across four or five accounts.
Who fixes it at tax time? You do.
Cross-account adjustments go on Form 8949: code "W" in column (f) with the disallowed amount in column (g), per the Form 8949 instructions. If you use TurboTax, we wrote a step-by-step guide to entering multi-account wash sales. The deferred loss isn't gone in the ordinary case — it moves into the replacement lot's basis — but the paperwork is on you, and in the IRA case there is no paperwork that gets it back.
How to actually check (without handing anyone your logins)
You need every account's trades in one ledger. You do not need to link your brokerage accounts to an aggregator to get it: every major broker exports trade history as CSV in about two minutes — our per-broker walkthroughs cover Robinhood (request the report early — generation takes 2–24 hours), Schwab, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, and E*TRADE.
Wash-Sale Guardian merges those CSVs into one ledger in your browser and shows every cross-account violation with dollar amounts, every currently open 30-day danger window with its exact safe date, and a year-end adjusted-basis summary for your CPA. Free, no signup, no account linking; the full detection methodology is public, including its limitations.
Frequently asked questions
Does the wash sale rule apply across brokerage accounts?
Yes. Under IRC §1091 the wash-sale rule applies to the taxpayer, not the account. A loss sale at one broker is washed by a substantially identical purchase within 30 days at any other broker, in your IRA, or — for joint filers — in your spouse’s account.
Do brokers track wash sales across accounts?
No. Brokers are only required to report wash sales for identical securities within a single account on Form 1099-B (Treas. Reg. §1.6045-1). No broker can see your accounts elsewhere, so cross-account violations never appear on any form you receive.
Does the wash sale rule apply to my IRA?
Yes — and it’s worse. Per Rev. Rul. 2008-5, if you sell at a loss in a taxable account and buy substantially identical shares in your traditional or Roth IRA within the 61-day window, the loss is permanently disallowed: no basis adjustment, no recovery, ever.
Does the wash sale rule apply to my spouse’s account?
Yes. IRS Publication 550 states the rule applies if your spouse (when filing jointly) or a corporation you control buys substantially identical stock within the window. Their re-buy washes your loss exactly as if you had made it.
Who is responsible for reporting cross-account wash sales?
You are. Because brokers only report same-account wash sales, cross-account adjustments must be made by the taxpayer on Form 8949 (code W in column (f), adjustment in column (g)). Consumer tax software will not do this automatically from imported 1099-Bs.