A Hard Lesson About Taxes And Getting It Right

Quote from ElectricSavant:

Don't you guys pay your taxes quarterly? If you under-estimate you can always amend your quarterlies.

As far as trading, doesn't any serious trader keep an excel spreadsheet, not only for tax purposes, but to make sure that there trades match with their broker? I print out my sheets and put them in my file for three years. I don't care how thick they are. I have 2006 taxes...2005 taxes...2004 taxes...and 2003 taxes in one of those plastic crates from Office Depot.

Excuse me for being Mr. "Goody-two-shoes" for posting what seems to be responsible...but this is what I do...I must see each day if what I think I made or lost is what my broker records. I actually update my spreadsheet after each break following the trade(s) to keep up with it. If there is only 5-20 trades a day its a piece of cake...

I trade Retail Spot Forex and will be getting back into Futures soon, but I would do this for anything I trade.

Michael B.
P.S. I am sure one of the traders can post a template...
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My point exactly. Good info on this thread, but the whole premise is bogus (buy tradelog)

Spreadsheets are easy. You can record 30 trades a day in less than 10 minutes. Rollup end of year data to compare with broker data and voila...............now expense accounting.....THAT should be the thread!!

BTW, I'll not post my spreadsheet until I can market it and disguise it in a bogus thread...:p
 
I agree. Serious traders MUST log every single trade. And I do that in an Excel spreadsheet too. My systems actually log most trades automatically.

But reporting accurately more than 2000 stock and option swing trades on a sched D form and "attach extra pages as necessary..." even electronically, is a drag of head-splitting proportions. Hell, Turbo Tax chokes on far less than that!

Yes, you can make Excel crank out sched D basis and trade info from your logs, but...forget it, it's too damn early to be talkin' taxes! :(
 
Wow, you guys really need to get up to speed. There have been mulitple changes in the last couple years, our old lazy "details upon request" are not accepted anymore (not that they really were).
Agreed, that the CURRENT best way is a crate of trade executions--line item Sch. D style.

Try keeping up with 300-500 executions a day on spreadsheet and adjusting for wash sales....no thanks.

Also agreed that Tradelog is a great product, gainskeeper as well. Use them or lose it......to the IRS.
 
Quote from MR.NBBO:

Wow, you guys really need to get up to speed. There have been mulitple changes in the last couple years, our old lazy "details upon request" are not accepted anymore (not that they really were).
Agreed, that the CURRENT best way is a crate of trade executions--line item style.

Try keeping up with 300-500 executions a day on spreadsheet and adjusting for wash sales....no thanks.

Also agreed that Tradelog is a great product, gainskeeper as well. Use them or lose it......to the IRS.
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Oh yeah, I know what the rules are, but until they drag my ass into an audit, they get what they get. To me, the important part is that I do pay all taxes I'm obligated for.

One of these dayz, they'll probably call me on it...
 
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Quote from Wayne Gibbous:

Oh yeah, I know what the rules are, but until they drag my ass into an audit, they get what they get. To me, the important part is that I do pay all taxes I'm obligated for.

One of these dayz, they'll probably call me on it...
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mr nbbo who says the irs won't accept anymore? the irs never officially allowed summarized accounting and had never made a statement on it. all they did in 2005 is reiterate there position to list every line which was really there policy to begin with. the idea is because some part time traders who might trade 3000 times a year but only over 40% of the year are filing as traders with writeoffs. with the sch d itemized they can see all the trades and frequency.but for somebody who trades 100k times and there scd d total sales match up i highly doubt they'll every question summarized accounting as the irs has no interest in seeing 1000 pages of sch d. like another poster said if they want it let them pull the 1000's of pages and do it themselves. if you pay what you owe you never have anything to worry about
 
Gainskeeper is great for stocks and options. I used it for years and never had a problem. This is just one more reason I don't regret moving to trading futures.
 
Okay okay...I'm looking into TradeLog and Gainskeeper.

They are far more sophisticated than they were a few years ago, when I looked at the trade reporting SW that was available then.

Mayyybeee I will try 'em. Hell, couldn't hurt! :D
 
Quote from eagle488:

This is the software I am going to use next time.

http://www.armencomp.com/tradelog/products.shtml
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I have been using this SW and my experience is very bad. I would not trust reporting taxes based on it. My recommendation is to look for something better.
One important point to consider is to look for SW that imports transactions in OFX format. In this way it is independent on the specific format of broker statements.
 
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