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How to complete IRS Form 3921

IRS Form 3921 is a new form businesses were required to report in 2011 for Incentive Stock Option (ISO) exercises occurring in 2010. An ISO is the right to purchase a certain number of shares of stock at a pre-established price.
The top of IRS Form 3921 asks for the transferor name and address and the employee name and address. The business or transferor is required to prepared IRS Form 3921 and the recipient must recognize (report) gain or loss on their tax return for the year in which they sell or otherwise dispose of the stock.

The form also asks for the account number. The account number is just a unique number that the employer uses to distinguish this employee’s account. If you are electronically submitting files with 250 records or more to the IRS, then you need an unique account number. If you are submitting more than one 3921 for the same employee, then you need a unique account number.

There are 6 boxes on IRS Form 3921. Each box is discussed below:

Box 1. Shows the date the incentive stock option to purchase was granted to the employee.

Box 2. Shows the date the employee exercised the option and purchased the stock at a pre-established price.

Box 3. Shows the exercise price per share of stock which was pre-established between the employer and employee.

Box 4. Shows the fair market value (FMV) of a share of stock on the date the option was exercised. Here the IRS wants to know how good (or bad) of a deal you received.

Box 5. Shows the number of shares of stock transferred from the employer to the employee at the exercise price shown in Box 3.

Box 6 is optional and shows the name, address and EIN of the corporation whose stock is being transferred to the employee if this corporation is not already shown in the upper left corner of the IRS 3921 form.

The 2006 Tax Relief and Health Care Act (TRHCA) mandated that started in 2011, a corporation must file an IRS Tax Form 3921 each time in transfers stock to an employee who has exercise an incentive stock option, with an exemption made for employees who are non-resident aliens.

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Erich J. Ruth

Erich J. Ruth provides technical support for National Software which is the parent company for 1099FIRE. 1099FIRE develops and markets a comprehensive range of products that enables any size of business or institution to effectively manage and comply with year-end filing requirements. 1099FIRE is an employee-owned company located in Phoenix, Arizona.

If you have any questions or comments about our software, feel free to contact us at any time.

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  1. Tom
    April 14th, 2014 at 13:37 | #1

    Hi Erich,

    Thank you very much for your information. I’d like to have a question if you don’t mind:

    I was granted, and exercised some ISOs in 2004 before leaving my old company, and I paid $0.2 for each share. The company went public a few years ago, and in 2013 I sold all the stock options for a gain.

    Since I’ve never received a 3921 form (probably because it didn’t exist in 2004), Turbo Tax asked for some info that I could fill out because I still have the original documents. However, I don’t know what to use for the FMV of the stock share in Box 4, because in 2004 the company was still private. In this case, should I use “N/A” or “0”, or something else for the FMV in Box 4?

    Thank you very much for your time and advice.

    Regards,

    Tom

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