I'm a Canadian with some tax questions. Having difficulties given that Interactive Brokers doesn't seem to export directly into any tax program. Do I have to manually insert every trade when reporting taxes(this is near impossible)? Can I simply sum up all trades(there are a bunch of them) and report one line under the capital gains section? If I have a forex gain/loss is this considered a capital gains? Is there any point in getting an accountant? Not sure they could make sense of all of the IB reports anyways. Any Canadians/others out there with any experience/advice with these issues?
I use quick tax now turbo tax. I use the netfile option. I have a spread sheet showing all trades and only submit the totals for the year. The spreadsheet is a backup if CCRA need more info. I trade US stocks, options and futures. The big hassle is converting to $Can for reporting purposes. I have filed my taxes this way for the last 7 or 8 years with no problem.
You said you report your totals. Is that total net stock purchases - total net stock sales? (is this number in the millions?) And how do you handle your futures trades? You must report them separately from stocks?. Do you lump forex gains in with whatever else you report or do you have a separate line for them too?
I report a total âAdjusted cost baseâ, a total âProceeds of Dispositionsâ and total âOutlays and expensesâ. All totals are in $Can. I use the monthly exchange rate from Bank of Canada web site to convert from $US to $Can. Yes the Cost base and proceeds numbers are in the millions. Unfortunately the Final Capital gains number is much smaller. I report Futures, Options and stock trades separately but just because thatâs how I keep track of them. Under the securities name I put IB 1, IB2 etc. I have all the spreadsheets and IBâs Monthly and yearly reports to back up my info.
For your Futures reporting, how do u report your adjusted cost basis and your proceeds? The stock reporting I'm understanding, but Futures not so much so. And thanks. This is helpful.
Futures are easy. You get a T5008 from IB and it has the proceeds on it. Thats all you need as that will be the amount you made or lost. You input that number in the T Slip area of your tax program. The tax program gets it onto the return. I can't remember if that number you get might be in Canadian dollars.
How do you report a Forex gain or loss? Do you only report after you've closed out a Forex position. Again, IB does not make this terribly simple to make sense of.
Can't help you there I don't trade Forex. As far as reporting US stock results I use the exchange rate published by the Bank of Canada for the month I traded the stock. So if I bought the stock in Jan I use the Jan exchange rate and if I sell in Mar I use the March rate. It has happened that a gain turns into a loss because of the exchange rate difference.
For Interactive Brokers Canada customers, I have submitted a suggestion in their 'Features Poll'. Interactive Brokers lets US customers download trades directly into Turbotax, this feature was requested (and implemented) in 2008! If you want to see this feature (and save tens of hours like me), do something about it. Go into 'Account Management' from their website, and get yourself a voting subscription (bottom left menu, under User Management). Its free, takes 30 seconds. Then vote here http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/general/poll/index.php?sid=7739 The US feature got implemented with just 32 votes!
I have found IB tax reporting to be very unreliable. you probably have to spend the time checking the numbers anyhow. I'll vote for your feature but probably won't use it.