Becaues I sold the put pair of calls many times a year, accumulated or tend to accumulate year after year, a deferred loss. Due to high number of trades I place, I can not possibly verify whether the deferred losses are harvested. WHen it is harvested? Next year for this year's deferred loss or when call options pair is exercised. How does trading platform know if it is the put pair of calls because lot of times I dont buy at the same time. What if the stradde is unbalanced? LEts say I bought 1 call and 2 puts. I am suspecting the etrade platform is setting both 2 puts as a deferred loss when there is onev 1 call. Although I can not verify etrade doing this, all signs are pointing so, after selling 2nd put for example, my gains are not decreased by that amount but deferred loss increased.
I don't know if this will help. If you are continually trading the same symbol, you have signed an agreement with your broker. Most will have you sign (agree) that you will use FIFO for your pairing...First in first out (you can look it up). You can request to have it another way....They should be able to accommodate you with another choice (allowed by law). But, your broker will go with the default unless you want (and sign for), a change.
If you are talking about wash sales, then it has no connection whatsoever to the ratio of puts to calls. A wash sale occurs when you sell something at a loss, and then you buy it again in less than 30 days. It doesn't matter what you were doing with the other leg of your straddle, or whatever the position was. The phrase deferred loss might be used by some folks to refer to a wash sale, but that is not the technical term. I have a US-based eTrade account, and I have not seen that expression anywhere on the website or in PDF account statements or tax forms. You need to clarify what you are talking about. And BTW, US options traders do not usually talk about options using the word pairs. That term is usually associated with Forex. The more common expression in US options markets is spread, because it often involves more than one leg (e.g., a butterfly or iron condor), or, as you have pointed out, a ratio that is not 1:1.