BRK.B, BRKB, BRK/B: One Security, Many Spellings, and the Wash Sale It Hid
Berkshire Hathaway's class B shares go by at least four spellings depending on who is writing them down. We now treat every spelling as one security, including for the wash sale rule, and we proved it on a real database.
Berkshire Hathaway class B shares trade as BRK.B at most data providers. Some brokers send BRKB. Regulators write BRK-B. Some files say BRK/B or BRK B. A person typing in a trade picks whichever they saw last.
If software treats those as different symbols, you get two holdings of the same shares, prices that land on one and not the other, and tax lots split across both. The worst case is quiet: sell at a loss under one spelling, buy back under another, and a checker that compares symbols sees two unrelated trades. The wash sale is still real. The software just does not see it.
What we do now
- A new holding is booked under the spelling your portfolio already uses for that security, so it never appears twice.
- The spelling you or your broker used is kept on the record, so everything still matches your statements.
- Tax checks group trades by security, not by spelling. A repurchase under any spelling within 30 days of a loss is a wash sale, and the disallowed loss rolls into the replacement shares.
How we checked
We ran the whole path on a fresh copy of the database our app runs on: a broker import spelled BRKB, a purchase typed as BRK.B, a broker row spelled BRK/B, a loss sale typed as BRK.B, and a purchase spelled BRKB three weeks later. One holding came out, every trade booked under one spelling, the sale used the right lot, and the wash sale was flagged with the disallowed loss on the replacement shares.