How do people with LOTS of itemized trades list them on US tax forms?

Question

Assume it is given that you need to itemize trades on, say, Form 8949 (+ any state form(s)). These forms only allow so many transactions per page (14 entries for Form 8949).
How exactly do people who have thousands of transactions to itemize (or tens or hundreds of thousands...) deal with this? Does the IRS really want to receive hundreds or thousands of pages of transactions?
And I suppose people e-file if they are willing and able to, but what about those who prefer to and/or are required to file by mail? Do they send entire reams of paper to the IRS? Or do federal & state governments provide a more practical solution?

Aganju · Answer

One way to get them there is to import them electronically - many brokers and most tax software support this.
I got 2300 transactions from one broker imported (and submitted to the IRS) without a problem; but I can‘t tell you how TurboTax spread it technically on many pages, I never looked.
Alternatively, you can total them for each category, and enter one total line only, each for short term covered, long term covered, etc.

Bob Baerker · Answer

I think that 2008 was the last year before electronic filing took place.  My 8949 form was 832 pages (over a ream and a half of paper!) and it took me all day to print it.
Now, brokerage firms report 1099 and 8949 forms to the IRS and I just report the 8949 totals.  I've never had a complaint from the IRS since 2008.

How do people with LOTS of itemized trades list them on US tax forms?

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