Filing taxes as a retail trader

I traded prop for the first (3) months or so of 2008 and then I switched to trading a retail (equities) account. This will be my first year filing taxes as a "retail trader." Anyway can someone point me to some guides, etc that will help me file? I would like to do my taxes myself.

Do you have to list every single trade? I recall reading something about this but not sure what the verdict is.

Any help would be great,

-Guru

 

i just use turbo tax home and business. yes. you are supposed to list every trade on the schedule d.

 

I've used Turbo Tax in the past so I'll look into that. So what's the best way to list each and every trade? Is there a way to import that data from the broker?

-Guru

 

Just be careful of the wash sale rule. It may result in larger tax liability than you thought.

 

Isn't this taken care of by mark to market accounting?

-Guru

 

turbo tax imo piece of s*t. always trying to connect some servers,lots of bugs.
i've tried in past-it suck and i've tried 2008-still suck. you can have my original cd for free. tax cut is way to go. no bs components installation, small, plain,easy to understand piece of software.
btw-i still don't understand,why i have spend fifty bucks to file a fucking taxes?
why this bs intuit company still in business? all this tax soft should be provided by us gov. for free.
yes you "suppose" to file every trade, but i never did for last 5-6 years..
just tottal basis costs for each account ,proceeds, total pl.
as long as total proceeds number(reported by your broker to irs) match on your tax and brokers-you should be fine.

 

I was wondering about that. I'd have to mail in 50 pages of Schedule Ds if I put each trade on one line. One line with all the totals sounds much easier.

 

It depends.

You will get a K-1 for the prop stuff from Jan through March 2008. You traded as retail from April through December 2008 and I assume you will get a 1099 for those trades under your personal name.

Unless you applied for mark to market accounting by April 15, 2008 for the calendar year 2008, then the wash sale rule will apply.

If you already have mark to market status with the IRS, then you will be fine.

 

Luckily I did apply for M2M acct by April 15, 2008 so I should be fine in the regard. Thanks for the info...

-Guru

 

Trying to get an idea of the benfits of retail as opposed toprop in equities and wondering how mark to market benefits and how do you apply to use it for tax purposes? If you have a few minutes I'd greatly appreciate why you went to retail from prop. Thanks for any input. Currently I'm mainly futures, but looking to go back into equities and eventually have both going,