Sometimes goodwill in doing something that saves the client money pays bigger dividends than bagging that $150 an hour. Most preparers hire an assistant ($10-20/hr) to do the grunt work and still charge >$50/hr for inputting data. My thoughts, If the CPA refuses to do this to save time, either ask for an adjustment to the fee, because it's likely built into the engagement, or look for a new preparer that will process your return using the total and supplementary schedule. Later, Cracked
I noticed that there was a problem with the 1099 totals last year. They were gross amounts and not net of commissions or something like that. I attached a note that the 1099 was incorrect, including the E-mail to IB stating such with an example highlighted. Haven't heard anything from the IRS yet........ (fingers crossed) It makes gettting the proper numbers for the Sch D much more difficult, no doubt. Later, Cracked
thanks for the reply, unfortunately i believe it takes about two or three years for "them" to get around to you...let's hope the supporting documentation is sufficient. did IB correct this problem this year?
Actually an incorrect gross proceeds total (sch D vs 1099) is a guaranteed red flag. The IRS will usually pull them right away to get the situation straightened out. I got a letter regarding one of my clients two years ago within 6 months after filing. This situation has been an ongoing issue with IB. I love the interface, but, the back office stuff is lacking regarding accurate 1099's the last few years. Maybe they get it right this year. Only time will tell....... Later, Cracked
here is a trick that i use that may help others with taxes. i use the most current year turbo tax to keep track of my trades. i open a new return and call it "2003 preliminary return". i then import info from 2001. then i override and change necessary numbers to reflect 2002 year end return. from there on i will enter my trades into that schedule d at end of every day. this way you get a running total of what you will owe. since tax laws dont change that much from year to year it comes out close. another nice feature is you can do "what ifs " during the year as you go. for example if you buy some new equitment you can compute after tax cost easily by entering it into return. when the real 2003 tax software comes out its a simple matter of copying the numbers. i do this because i dont trust the downloads from the brokerages. i have seen too many mistakes and a small mistake can make a big difference. i have found the short sales are a big problem on the downloads.
this is what i use http://www.gainskeeper.com/home.aspx figures out everthing for you and allows you to import from your brokerage firm. it will even figure wash sales. the only downside is that you have to manually mark each short sale.
I agree 100% with volente_00. Gainskeeper is the one I use too and it works great. The only other thing is you need to pay for it each year, it's a service, which is based on the number of trades you import. I tried using GTT Tradelog and found it didn't calculate wash sales correctly. The guy that developed it was going to work on fixing it so it did but I don't know if he was able to. Gave up on it. After spending countless hours trying to get it to work right I became totally frustrated with it and was very disappointed since it cost so much. And although the guy said he would help me, in my experience I felt he really wasn't very helpful at all. And when I asked for a refund he just sent me an email saying a fix was in the works. So I ended up getting stuck with it and out the money I paid for it. And I ended up using Gainskeeper since I knew that worked and I needed to get my taxes done. It may work okay for Mark to the Market accounting. Don't know as I don't do my taxes this way. And they may have fixed it now. Don't know. Couldn't tell you. And it may need updating too if you change brokers like I did and your new broker isn't supported with the version you have. And the updating isn't cheap.
Have any of you ever used a product called TWS Auto Track? It is specifically designed to work with IB. I saw the link on the IB webside and a review of the product. It has recieved good reviews, based on responses from 45 people. The website shows a lot of screen shots. It looks like it might do the trick with regard to keeping records for tax purposes. http://www.twsautotrack.net/ I am considering using this software for my taxes this year. Please let me know if any of you have had any experience with it.
I have been using Gainskeeper this year as well. I like it, but I'm in a bit of a quandary right now though because I switched from trading stocks to trading futures in the middle of the year and Gainskeeper does not track futures trades. I was looking into TradeLog, but after reading other posts on this thread, there appears to be a problem with IB and T-log concerning the accurateness of the 1099s. Does anyone know of any other products that interface with IB and that support futures trading? Thanks
If that happens again one solution might be to make sure your gross proceeds (sched D) and 1099 match but adjust for the error on the line where you net out your commissions. Commissions are not reported.