Few questions here for people. Was going to call my old CPA on Monday but figured I would ask here 1st. About 10-12 years ago I lost about 90k through John Hancock. I cashed out the remaining balance and that was that. If I make 100k in my account, can I not use the 90k I lost against it or is it just too late? Also, does anyone have any advice if the above scenario I'm SOL, what is the BEST route for me to go to avoid paying the max amount of taxes? I live in NY, I'm married, household of 4, total income is about 150k. Should I put cash, savings, etc into a 401k account and trade through a broker? Does that not matter? If I make 1 million or 10 million in the 401k, does it really matter because I have to pay tax no matter what? These are the 1st questions that pop into my head.....Currently, I'm using Etrade, strictly cash account, swing trading, about even overall. But, I'm going to need a larger account than what I currently have to do what I want to do and that is why I'm asking before I make anymore moves and have to undo them... Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
If you had used online TurboTax consistently for your tax purposes during the years, it would have taken care of it for you. Most probably you are jumping between different CAPs or tax tools. You can deduct 3000 of your loss from your income each year and deduct the whole amount as carried over from your gains in the next years. By the way you cannot dump a huge amount into 401K or IRA account because it is tax free. There is a limit and rules for that.
Some taxpayers make a tragic mistake in not reporting capital losses on tax returns. Years later when they have a capital gain to report they want to offset it with the capital loss carryover but the IRS does not allow them to do so since they don't have a capital loss carryover reported on the prior year tax return. The problem is that year's close normally after 3 years so you can't amend the old tax returns to reflect the capital loss carryover each year.