Why do people want to rely on free anonymous forum advice to save money? It is only a starting point to get ideas. And many times, the advice might be from a different country! But ANYONE who is a serious trader, at least ONCE, needs to sit down with a tax-savvy CPA, even on the Internet, to set themselves set up, organized, and legally "vetted." If USA/Canada, you need to ensure you are set up OK on the fed and state level, with proper designation for your methods & instruments, ready to do proper record/book keeping, tax-deferred accounts, whatever. Are those anonymous people going to show up if you get audited because you were improper? "Gee, I thought I saved myself $250..." Do you want to have to go back over years of accounting and other things to untie yourself if not done properly? Are you going to sift through the free advice, and take that from people who sound "smarter" when you yourself may not know much about the problem?
I agree with you entirely TraderZones. One should not rely on getting advices from Internet forums regarding tax matters. Whatever a trader decides to do, it needs to stand up to IRS' audit. One should seek for assistance from accounting professionals. The purpose of my posts is to point out some reading materials related to how tax return can be filed to enrich one's knowledge. And be more prepared when talking to the accounting firms. I found that regular CPA people are usually not adequate. Many of them are not familiar with how to handle trader versus investor stuff. The best is to find someone who is specialized with doing accounting for traders. I use an accounting firm who specialized in helping traders: http://www.tradersaccounting.com/index.php and I like them. I got the lead originally through Online Trading Academy. I am sure there are many others like them. I myself, unfortunately, am a U.S. national. Don't get me wrong. I love my country. I said "unfortunately" in the sense that I share the same tax burden (very high as you know) with my trading profits like million others, giving it to Uncle Sam and under the leadership, or perhaps dictatorship, of this government to spend at least partially on TARP and the Stimulus package...
I think we would be amazed at how many people dorely on anonymous advice. They try to make $100K+ a year trading business, and refuse to spend a couple hundred on sound advice. Like people who don't get an engineer inspection report before buying an old expensive house... To quote from the legal field, a person who has himself as a CPA has a fool for a client
RS of Houston Inc is presenting a free three part webinar on the income tax aspects of trading. The first part is tomorrow at 4:30 PT (Pacific Time). Register at http://www.tradersaccounting.com/product.php?productid=16298&cat=262&page=1
Thanks for your reply. I have 495 transactions with 2.11M buy price and 2.10M proceeds, with net loss of 105K . I had not opted for MTM last year. :-( Is there a way I can take this loss against my family(Me+wife) earnings?
maybe. contact bob green at http://www.greencompany.com/. i think he has talked about a way to get m to m done and then a nol carryback even if you missed the deadline.