Best way to save IB info for tax man

R

ryoubetteroff

I trade with IB and would like to hear what others do regarding saving their statements for tax purposes.

There are two programs on IB freelance tools; ib-screen and tradekeeper.

Does anyone use these? How do you do your record keeping?

Thanks for any reply.
 
IB provides you an electronic summarized 1099 (what they report to the IRS) and also a year-end electronic statement for your records with both the buys and sells. I'm not crazy about the format of the latter but its considerably better than what other brokers provide. Additionally, they provide electronic monthly statements whcih you can also use.
 
I use TRADELOG to import all trades from IB into the software, I make about 6-7 thousand trades a month.....so it really comes in handy--it's the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Tradelog is from ARMEN software, and also can be found at greentradertax.com (a good CPA).

I can't say enough about it for importing my stock transactions, but haven't used it for anything but stock data. It flawlessly reports things to the penny, super easy to do too.
 
I used Tradelog for the first time this year, and while it has some weaknesses, it does do one thing that you need that the IB statements alone will not provide, and that is calculate a wash-sale adjusted P&L statement.

Unless you are claiming marked-to-market status, you need to deal with wash sales.

sax
 
By the way...regarding mark-to-market election, you might want to take a look at this brief overview of things to consider.

http://www.edaytradertax.com/tradermtm.htm

Here are some important points:

"Once you switch to MTM accounting, all your future profits will be ordinary income - therefore you would not able to utilize your carryforward losses, unless you have other sources of capital gains.

"MTM election can only be revoked under rare special circumstances, so it not a step to be taken lightly. Please make sure this is appropriate for your situation."
 
Quote from saxon:

By the way...regarding mark-to-market election, you might want to take a look at this brief overview of things to consider.

http://www.edaytradertax.com/tradermtm.htm

Here are some important points:

"Once you switch to MTM accounting, all your future profits will be ordinary income - therefore you would not able to utilize your carryforward losses, unless you have other sources of capital gains.

"MTM election can only be revoked under rare special circumstances, so it not a step to be taken lightly. Please make sure this is appropriate for your situation."
More...
Nice resource.

Thanks.

nitro
 
i use tradelog for ib, and it definately takes the nightmare out of tax time - it takes me a little over an hour to download and verify the printouts

then another hour at hr blockhead to get it overwith
 
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