Schedule D involves much more than just formatting. It requires complex calculations, and legal and accounting interpretations, which cannot be easily automated. Most accountants don't even know how to do a correct Schedule D for people who trade a lot. You either need to learn to do it yourself, or you need an accountant with special expertise in doing returns for traders.
Thanks for the feedback, but paying an accountant is unreasonable. Of course, I can do it myself. All I am looking for is for the broker to supply the data on one line, instead of two. And for that broker to take into account partial closing of posiitons. I want to find a way to rearrange the data that IB supplies, so that I can avoid the time-consuming effort of filling out the Schedule D. Mark
if you trade options you are not making that many trades. you can do what i do. every day i enter my trades into a schedule d. takes about 10 min. at tax time its all done and it is accurate because the trade was entered when it was fresh in your mind, not a year later.
Thank you. I once added my daily trades to an Excel worksheet, but I make thousands of trades every year, and keeping up on a dairly basis proved too tedious. Still, I think the idea is a good one and I may revert to that method for 2006. Thank you, Mark
as the sched D seems to be an issue for active options traders, perhaps you can send me a PM with an example of what you're looking for. I'll pass it along to see if there is a way to accomodate.
For IB users: what times of the day (USA time) can you enter option orders for USA option markets? TIA.
You can submit an order any time, but (obviously) it can be filled only during hours when the market is open (9:30 Am to 4:02 PM, New Your time). Mark