I currently trade on 3 accounts: 2 IRA (IB & TOS), and 1 401k (Fidelity). Why 3? Well, one is the wife's, and two are mine (split between IB/TOS because one allows futures and one is good for options). The question is: What sort of recommendations would you have for record keeping on these style of accounts? Since they are tax-deferred, I won't need to report until we start withdrawing, however, I've got a good 15-20+ years left in the workforce, so there's a lot of trades that could happen between now and then. I'm swing trading, so we're not talking 20 round trips a day here, but even trading on a weekly basis, that could add up. I've done taxes for trading in the past and it found it cumbersome for even one year, so I can imagine it'd be quite a nightmare 20 years down the road. Hell, would I even be able to download those records from my broker after that long of a time? If I strictly trade futures in the IB account, the 1256 should be no big deal, and there's the possibility I will convert the TOS to a Roth, so that could reduce my paperwork a decent amount. Anyway, thanks for any suggestions, and if this has been covered in a previous thread, I apologize (a quick search with taxes and IRA didn't come up with anything).
all money comes out of a regular ira taxed as ordinary income. a roth is not taxed at all on withdrawl. in eithr case there will be no need to establish a basis.