I think I figured out my issue and it's essentially a few things that were throwing me off and causing a lot of confusion. After going through some trades by hand and comparing them I came to these conclusions: 1.) From what I can tell 1099 summary of trade breakdowns by symbols is basically worthless garbage data. I was trying to cross reference it with both my raw PnL and the 8949 form but they don't match up at all. I wish I knew what was causing this discrepancy but I can't tell for sure, maybe it has something to do with buying/selling options and letting them expire worthless? 2.) The broker appears to add the cost basis correctly from previous wash sales on the 8949 form to trade when they are closed, but it doesn't appear to be correct on the 1099 breakdown. This was very confusing to me until I came to the conclusion that the totals on the right hand column of the 8949 "(h) Gain or (loss)" are the only thing that matters and as long as those totals matched my raw PnL then it all begins to make sense. 3.) The numbers on the 8949 form were correct and matched my raw PnL which I obtained by downloading my entire trade history from Interactive Brokers. This is based on a sample where I checked by hand some of the larger discrepancies I noticed between the 1099, 8949 and raw PnL. 4.) Adding further confusion to the situation, options on GLD, SLV and UNG are treated as 1256 transactions which was throwing me off when I tried to calculate my total taxable raw PnL for short term gains using my trade history totals and comparing to the 8949 form totals. Only by breaking down and cross checking individual symbols was I able to gain some confidence that the numbers were correct. In the end I'm still not sure wtf is going on with the 1099 form with the trade breakdowns and why they don't match up, it just appears to be garbage data - however the total numbers at the bottom of the 1099 match the 8949 form - which from my limited testing appear to be correct and correspond to my raw PnL. So I'm just gonna go with it and hope everything Interactive Brokers supplied to me is correct. Hope this helps.
Yes, that’s the key as long as the final total P/L numbers are correct. That’s all that matters. I think 1099 uses some kind of software to calculate wash sales so it can be quite different from the real trades. Go back to my post #70 on page 7 to get a feel on how complicated wash sales can become if you repeatedly trade the same stock like in day trading.