Fast answers to your most common questions

The IRS has announced extensions to federal tax filing and payment deadlines to help individuals and businesses better manage the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. For more details, read our tax deadline article. Here's what you need to know:  

• Federal tax return filings and payments are now due on July 15. The deadline for filing federal income tax returns (or tax return extensions) for the 2019 tax year has been extended by 90 days and must now be filed by July 15. Estimated tax payments for 2020 that are usually due on April 15 have also been delayed until July 15.
• Many tax payment dates haven't changed. The IRS has released additional guidance about other deadlines, including estimated tax payments for June 15 and beyond, as well as other tax filings. Many of the other tax deadlines have not changed. We recommend checking this IRS FAQ page to ensure you're up to date on the latest information about which deadlines have been delayed.
• State tax returns and payments may or may not change. Be sure to check with your local and state taxing authority to make sure you do't miss any deadlines.
• The deadline for IRA contributions has also been extended. Contributions to IRA accounts that would have normally been due on April 15, have been moved to July 15. For more details on IRA contributions rules, see IRS Publication 590-A.

You can view, print or download your 1099 from by logging into your 1099 Dashboard. Form 1099-R, Bank Form 1099-INT and Employer Sponsored 1099 tax forms can also be found in your dashboard.

Other tax forms (e.g.., Form 5498, Form 1099-MISC) can be found on the Statements page.

You can also access your 1099s via the Schwab Mobile App by tapping More on the bottom of the screen, then tap Client Service Menu, and then select the 1099 Tax Forms menu.

It’s a good idea to check the IRS's Coronavirus Tax Relief and the IRS FAQ page regularly for updates. You can also contact your tax professional for more guidance.

If we receive updated information after we've produced your original form, we're required by the IRS to send you a corrected Form 1099 within 30 days of being made aware of the change. The most likely reason is that one or more of the issuers of a security in your account reported a reallocation of certain income, such as dividends or capital gains, after we produced your most recent tax form.

On your corrected 1099, you will find the revision(s) clearly labeled as "Corrected."

You can download your Schwab 1099 data directly into Turbo Tax^® or H&R Block^® tax preparation software. If you're having difficulty downloading your 1099 data into your tax preparation software, please log in to the Security Center and select "Enable Access" under OFX. For more information regarding downloading your 1099 data, please visit our Tax Center.

Form 5498 will be posted online and mailed by May 31. 

Please note, the deadline for making prior year contributions to retirement accounts has been extended to July 15. If you make contributions after we've mailed your original Form 5498, we will produce a Corrected Form 5498 within two weeks of your contribution.

When available, your Form 5498 can be found here, under Accounts > Statements. You can also access your Form 5498 via the Schwab Mobile App by tapping More on the bottom of the screen, then tap Client Service menu, and then select Statements & Reports menu.

Log in and visit our RMD page for information on which accounts require minimum distributions, how to get your funds, and setting up your RMD in 3 simple steps.

You can also use our Required Minimum Distribution Calculators to see how much you might need to take out.

Yes, RMDs from retirement accounts are waived for 2020. You can read more about the RMD waiver and the major features of the economic stimulus package in our latest market commentary. We will continue to provide more updates and perspective from our Schwab experts as information becomes available.

Yes, one of the provisions of the SECURE Act was that you can now make contributions to your Traditional IRA at any age, as long as you have earned income. If you are over age 70.5 and would like to make a contribution to your Traditional IRA, please call 800-435-4000 or deposit a check. Please note that if you are over age 70.5, you can only make contributions for the 2020 tax year, not 2019.

MoneyLink is a free Schwab service that allows you to electronically transfer funds via ACH (Automated Clearing House) between Schwab Brokerage accounts and other domestic financial institutions.

You can enroll in MoneyLink, verify trial deposits, and manage existing profiles on Schwab.com by following Accounts > Transfers & Payments > External Accounts. MoneyLink is available for Schwab Brokerage accounts only.

To enroll through the mobile App:

1. Log in, go to More, Transfers & Payments, and hit Transfer.
2. Select External Accounts and click Add Account.
3. Select the Terms and Conditions box and click Continue.
4. Select your financial institution, enter the login credentials for your financial institution and click Continue.
5. Choose a 2-Factor Authentication method and click Continue.
6. Enter your temporary identification code and click Continue.
7. Confirm your selected account and click Continue.
8. A confirmation message will appear.

It depends on where you live.

If you’re a resident of AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, IA, ID, KS, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA, or WY, or a member of Armed Forces America or Armed Forces Pacific:

For standard delivery, mail to:
Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
P.O. Box 982600
El Paso, TX 79998-2600

For Overnight/FedEx/UPS delivery, mail to:
Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
1945 Northwestern Drive
El Paso, TX 79912-1108

If you’re a resident of AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV, American Samoa, Guam, Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands, or a member of Armed Forces Europe:

For standard delivery, mail to:
Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
P.O. Box 628291
Orlando, FL 32862-8291

For Overnight/FedEx/UPS delivery, mail to:
Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
1958 Summit Park Blvd.
Orlando, FL 32810

To avoid delays, please do not mail checks directly to branches.

Yes, there is a limit on the amount you may deposit each day. Your daily deposit limit amount is clearly indicated on the Deposit screen, just under the Amount field.

For answers to other common mobile deposit questions, visit our dedicated page.

A problem was identified in early March that prevented some clients from linking their external bank account to their Schwab account. This issue has been resolved. Note that you should confirm your username and password for your bank account prior to initiating the external account linking process.

Go to our Send Wire page, log in, and follow the instructions.

Use our dedicated Client FAQ page for additional questions around moving money or assets and your account.

Our step-by-step guide will show you how to use the All-in-One trade ticket to trade stocks, ETFs (exchange-traded funds) and options. 

Use the Order Status page to view the status of all open orders and other recent order activity in the currently selected account.

To change an open order, click the Change button. The "Change Order Request" screen will appear. You can change the quantity, price, or special conditions of your order. Other fields cannot be changed.

NOTE: Changing an order DOES NOT GUARANTEE that the original order will not be executed. When you change an order, FOR A SHORT TIME IT MAY SEEM AS THOUGH TWO ORDERS ARE OPEN. You do not have to send another change request, the old order will eventually be closed (if it is not Too Late to Cancel).

If you need to cancel an order and the order still shows as Open on the Order Status page, click on the "Cancel" button. The "Cancel Request Verification" screen will appear. On this page you have the choice of "Do Not Cancel Order" or "Cancel Order." After you click on "Cancel Order," a "Cancel Order Acknowledgment" will appear, confirming that we have received your request to cancel your order.

When selling one mutual fund and buying another, canceling the sell order will cancel both the buy and the sell trade orders (since the proceeds are no longer available for the buy order). Canceling the buy order will leave the sell order intact, and will only cancel the buy order.

Once your order is executed, it cannot be changed or canceled. During market hours, only limit, stop and stop limit orders can be changed, because market orders are generally executed too quickly. Market orders entered while the market is closed or during market halts may be changed only if they can be processed before the market opens on a best efforts basis. Mutual fund orders cannot be changed. You must cancel the order and enter a new one.

With Schwab Stock Slices, you can own a slice (fractional share) of any stock in the S&P 500® starting at $5 each. Select between 1 and 10 stocks by name or use pre-sorted lists by industry and the amount you’d like to invest up to $10,000. You can use Schwab Stock Slices to invest as often as you'd like. 

Conveniently get started at Schwab.com under Trade > Schwab Stock Slices or through the Schwab Mobile App.

Generally, a pattern day trader is a client who has executed four or more day trades in a margin account within five business days. As a pattern day trader, you must maintain the $25,000 minimum equity for the previous trading day.

If you drop below the required minimum of $25,000, you will be held to liquidating trades only for that entire day. You can satisfy the minimum by depositing additional funds and/or marginable securities.

Stock settlement violations can occur when new trades are not properly covered by settled funds.
Although settlement violations generally occur in cash accounts, they can also occur in margin accounts, particularly when trading non-marginable securities.

You can read more about the main types of settlement violations and how to avoid them here.

Margin is an extension of credit from a brokerage company using your own securities as collateral. Funds borrowed on margin may be used for any purpose, including the purchase of securities. Interest is charged on the borrowed funds for the period of time that the loan is outstanding. For more information, please review The Charles Schwab & Co. Guide to Margin.
 

Schwab can liquidate securities to cover any margin deficiency and is not required to notify you before doing so. If you or Schwab liquidates securities to meet a margin call, your risks include unintended tax consequences from the sale of your securities, the possibility that Schwab might sell securities you preferred to hold, and a price received for a sale that you may be unhappy with. If a margin call is issued, you are required to promptly bring your account to the required maintenance level. It is Schwab's policy to attempt to contact you, when practicable, to notify you of a margin deficiency. However, Schwab can sell securities in your account, without prior notice, to cover any deficiency.

Once you borrow on margin, you are required to maintain a certain amount of equity in your account, depending on the securities you hold. By 'equity', we mean the value of the account above the amount borrowed from Schwab. Typically, the equity maintenance requirement is at least 30% of the total account value, but it can be higher for certain securities or accounts.

Visit our Margin Loans page for more information on requirements for buying and borrowing against securities in a margin account based on Federal Reserve Board Regulation T ("Reg T"), FINRA regulations, and Schwab rules.

To view margin maintenance requirements of a specific security, log in and use the Margin Maintenance Requirement Lookup tool.

Your assets are yours. The SEC's Customer Protection Rule (Rule 15c3-3) safeguards customer assets at brokerage firms by preventing firms from using customer assets to finance their own proprietary businesses. At Schwab, clients' fully paid securities are segregated so that they are not available to the firm. Client cash deposits invested at the broker-dealer are maintained in Special Reserve Accounts For The Exclusive Benefit Of Our Customers, as required by the SEC's Customer Protection Rule.

Yes and Yes. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) was created to protect against the loss of customer assets at brokerage firms. SIPC offers protection of up to $500,000, including a $250,000 limit for cash, if a brokerage firm fails and covers most types of securities, such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. SIPC does not protect against losses caused by a decline in market value. For more information about SIPC, visit www.sipc.org. In addition to SIPC, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. customers receive an extra level of coverage. Schwab maintains "excess SIPC" insurance protection for securities and cash up to an aggregate claim amount of $600 million. This coverage helps ensure customer claims will be covered in the event of a brokerage firm failure and funds covered by SIPC protections are exhausted.

Yes. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an independent agency that is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Its purpose is to protect depositors' funds placed in banks and savings associations. Since the FDIC was established in 1933, no depositor has lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds. The standard FDIC insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, per ownership category, and includes accounts held singly or jointly. The same amount applies to trust-owned accounts. Go to www.fdic.gov to learn more about FDIC coverage.

All deposit accounts held at Charles Schwab Bank, SSB are FDIC-insured, including Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Checking^® accounts and Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Savings^® accounts.

Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., acting as a deposit broker, can place deposits at FDIC-insured banks on your behalf. In such cases, the FDIC insurance available from the bank "passes through" to you. FDIC-insured deposits are available through your Schwab brokerage account in two ways: 

• Certificates of deposit. Schwab's CD marketplace, Schwab CD OneSource^®, enables you to purchase CDs from FDIC-insured banks across the country. CDs you purchase through Schwab are aggregated with other deposits you hold at each issuing institution and are FDIC-insured up to $250,000 per bank.¹ Through CD OneSource, you may purchase CDs from multiple banks for added FDIC coverage. 
• Bank Sweep. If the cash feature for your Schwab brokerage account is Bank Sweep, your cash balances are automatically swept to deposit accounts at Schwab-Affiliated Banks and are FDIC-insured, in aggregate, up to $250,000 per Affiliated Bank, per depositor, for each account ownership category.

You can find detailed information by account, updated every business day, on the Balances page or by going to schwab.com/login > Accounts > Balances. It is also available on your monthly statement.
 

See our dedicated FAQs on Money Market Funds here.

If your goals are long term or haven’t changed, it's a good idea to stay the course. Shifting to a more conservative allocation after markets have declined can mean locking in short-term losses and could put you at risk of missing the early stages of a rebound, which is historically when some of the strongest gains have occurred.

However, if you still want to change your portfolio allocation, you can review and update your portfolio by retaking the questionnaire online. After log in, click the Profile tab and select Review Profile, then adjust your answers based on your new risk tolerance.

The primary purpose of rebalancing is to keep your portfolio's asset allocation consistent with your targeted level of risk as markets fluctuate over time. The recommended allocation for your portfolio is based on your goal, time horizon, and risk profile.

Schwab Intelligent Portfolios are monitored and automatically rebalanced as needed to keep the allocation consistent with the client’s risk profile as markets fluctuate over time. Portfolio allocations are not adjusted tactically based on short-term views about the markets. In a normal environment, rebalancing happens a few times per year; during more volatile times, don’t be surprised if this number increases."

As with any investment, all Schwab Intelligent Portfolios contain some level of investment risk. While our most conservative models have lower risk, they, too, are susceptible during market volatility.

Transactions (e.g. account closures) can take up to five business days to process. Processing times are also noted in the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Solutions Brokerage Agreement.

For taxable accounts, the wash sale rule is a sale, and then repurchase of the same security over a 30-day period which disallows the loss for tax deduction purposes. During times of market volatility, trading increases both for account rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting purposes. Because of this, when clients adjust their risk after a trading event has occurred, there could be certain securities within their portfolio that do not trade immediately in order to comply with this tax code. However, the trade instruction remains in the account and is executed as soon as possible.

Tax-loss harvesting can help offset capital gains and lower your taxable income by automatically selling an ETF that has fallen enough below the price you paid for it and replacing it with an alternate ETF in the same asset class to keep your portfolio's allocation consistent.

Periods of elevated market volatility highlight the potential benefit of tax-loss harvesting as the number of these trades have historically surged when markets turn turbulent. The goal of the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios algorithm is to maintain a portfolio that closely tracks the investor's strategic asset allocation and captures tax-deductible losses while generally preventing wash sales in your account. As it’s a complicated and time-consuming process, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios has automated this process.

If you are a Schwab client who currently has a mortgage or home equity line of credit (HELOC) through Charles Schwab Bank, SSB and Quicken Loans, you may be eligible for mortgage payment relief.

You can request payment relief in order to suspend your monthly mortgage payments for a period of time, up to 90 days. During this time, interest will continue to accrue on your loan.
 
The past due amount must be paid at the end of the 90 day period, or you can contact Quicken Loans to discuss a non-credit impacting loan modification.

There is no fee to make this request and this will not impact your credit rating.  

To learn more, call Quicken Loans at 800-279-3005. Quicken Loans will be able to assist you and discuss options available to you based on your situation.

No. Charles Schwab Bank does not issue Small Business Administration (SBA)-backed loans and does not participate in PPP.  

To learn more about PPP, please visit www.SBA.gov/PPP.

If appropriate for your situation, you could consider borrowing against your assets by using a margin loan from Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. or a Pledged Asset Line (PAL) from Charles Schwab Bank. Alternatively, you could also consider borrowing against your home with either a cash-out refinance mortgage, or Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC), through Charles Schwab Bank's home loans provider, Quicken Loans. If you would like to discuss these borrowing solutions in more detail, please contact your Regional Banking Manager at 800-497-7470.

Please note that entering into a Pledged Asset Line and pledging securities as collateral involve a high degree of risk; make sure you understand the risks before you apply.
 

After careful consideration, to protect our clients, our teams and our communities, branches are temporarily closed to walk-in traffic as a result of COVID-19. Please contact your Schwab Financial Consultant or contact our 24/7 Service Center at 800-435-4000. Clients can also engage with us through our website, online chat, and the Schwab mobile app. For additional ways to work with us digitally, visit schwab.com/go-digital.

Branches will reopen on a localized basis, and only when we're confident we can provide an environment that is safe, clean and comfortable for your visit. As States gradually reopen, we are carefully monitoring conditions and guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as well as federal, state and local governments, and will follow a phased reopening process.

Please visit your local branch page for updates as we work to safely open our branches on a localized basis.

Until your local branch is ready to reopen, we are just a phone call away and Schwab's virtual and digital options are available to help you manage your financial life from the comfort of your own home:

• Call your local branch or our service center to speak to a live representative.
• Log in to Schwab.com to access account information, transfer funds, and set account alerts.
• Use the Schwab Mobile App to manage your finances and deposit checks remotely. Search for "Schwab Mobile" in the app store, or download from here and watch how-tos.

Go to schwab.com/go-digital for more about our online services and to watch other tutorial videos.

Schwab's highest priority is protecting the security of the information and the assets of our clients. It's important to be aware of the schemes and tactics fraudsters are employing during this global pandemic.

We continue to diligently monitor the current situation, while following the guidance of health authorities, including the CDC. We're focused on balancing a dual mandate to protect the health and safety of our representatives and serve clients. Out of an abundance of caution we have activated our continuity planning groups to prepare for workplace safety and minimize any potential disruption to our operations or client service. Across all our locations, we have restricted travel, canceled Schwab events, and increased our efforts to thoroughly clean our facilities.

We have significantly expanded our remote access approach giving all representatives who have the ability to work remotely to do so.  For everyone working on-site, we are committed to continuing to provide a healthy environment, including following CDC guidelines, enhanced cleaning cycles, and enhanced social distancing.

We will continue to take preventive measures on an ongoing basis to maintain a clean and healthy environment.