Wallace and OP, From the same site, here's the site's Tax Guy reply to a Canadian day trader's question: Follow-Up Question: Thanks very much for the reply. Your website is great and has lot of helpful information. One quick follow-up question: Does the same rule apply to day-trading? Looking at the result of each sell transaction will be very difficult if someone is doing day trading in one stock. Many times there could be multiple buys and sells on the same day and hundreds of transactions in a tax year. You have an option to make an election to treat all of your trading in securities as either capital or income related transactions. In other words you may elect to have all of your trading considered either capital gains or losses or as income transactions. If you elect capital gains treatment, you are better off for capital gains since the tax is ½ the normal rate. Losses (non-superficial) are applied to gains and can be carried forward back three years and forward indefinitely and can be only used against capital gains. With the income election your gains and losses are not considered capital. In this case 100% of the gain is included in income and taxed at the full rate. Losses are losses and you may have other deductions available since you will be considered to operating a business. http://blog.taxresource.ca/superficial-losses-gains-loss-on-identical-properties/
superficial loss - exactly sounds like wash sale rule here south of the border. And as to the OPs original question, atleast in the US, mark-to-market is applicable to individual traders and getting rid of wash sales and ability to write off more losses (in bad years; even against previous years gains) against other income are the key reasons to go MTM. Downside; you pay taxes on profits at twice the capital gains rate. But if you trade prop or something like that (canadian rule also seems to imply trading in margin account), then you dont have a choice. -gariki
Examples of an unincorporated business would be a sole proprietorship or a partnership. In Canada this would be part of your personal tax return each year, as opposed to doing separate corporate tax filings if you choose to incorporate (e.g. 1234567 Canada Inc.). http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/slprtnr/menu-eng.html
And here's your industry code classification when filing Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investment and Related Activities - 523000 http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/slprtnr/rprtng/ndstry/srvcs-eng.html