Filing tax return as day trader

[traderstatus]

Quote from bighitter1:trader status IB DOESN'T EVEN SEND AN ITEMIZED 1099 B WITH EVERY TRADE TO THE IRS. THEY SEND A CONSOLIDATED 1099 WITH YOUR TOTAL SALES FIGURE THATS IT.

I respectfully suggest that perhaps you do not fully know what IB provides, or how to utilize it. I work with their reports nearly every day this time of year, and the information is there for tax reporting. I'm not sticking up for IB. Thier reporting gives me agida.

As to why IB gives out "crap" while Fidelity, Ameritrade, Merrill, and others provide customer ease-of-use downloads or trade matchings printouts... some might answer that by saying that you get what you pay for in this world.

 

[traderstatus]

Quote from bighitter1:trader status if the irs IS so serious and "takes the time to get brokers to send them a 1099". THEN HOW THE HELL COME I CAN MAKE 25K OPTION TRADES AND NOT ONE TRADE IS EVER SENT TO IRS. HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE CHEATING THE IRS OUT OF BILLIONS BY NOT REPORTING THERE OPTION TRADES?

Excellent observation. What's your address again?

 

[Beach Man]

Aren't short term capital gains reported on the same Form as dividends? .. and long term capital gains reported on 1099 B ?

 

[Beach Man]

Quote from bighitter1:

trader status if the irs IS so serious and "takes the time to get brokers to send them a 1099". THEN HOW THE HELL COME I CAN MAKE 25K OPTION TRADES AND NOT ONE TRADE IS EVER SENT TO IRS. HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE CHEATING THE IRS OUT OF BILLIONS BY NOT REPORTING THERE OPTION TRADES?

You are on your honor system to report all your option trades and those who don't will someday soon be in for a rude awakening..

 

[reid5525]

Quote from traderstatus:

Many brokers already do, and it gets better each year. Ameritrade is one of the best, IMO, as you can run the trade matching reports in numerous formats: with wash sales for regaular reporting, or without wash sales for you M2M traders. Plus, as required by IRS, they produce separate reports for the year-end Sec 475 M2M and Sec 481 calculations... And numerous other reports for non-tax analysis too!

For my clients who have AMTD Apex I often log in (with a temp password) and just run the reports myself for their tax complaince.

thanks for the info. is there software that can do the kinds of things that you talked about. it would have to record each trade, day-by-day in the irs required format.

 

[JackR]

Quote from Beach Man:

Aren't short term capital gains reported on the same Form as dividends? .. and long term capital gains reported on 1099 B ?

Dividends are on 1099-Div
Long and Short Term Capital Gains (Co-mingled) are on 1099-B

You must break out the long and short term capital gains as well as input your cost basis.

A broker cannot always figure out your cost basis for a stock. Easiest example is a transfer of your account between brokers. A more complex example is acquiring stock via an option exercise. Or adjusting your basis for stock dividends on which you have paid tax already.


In the case of futures, the broker sends a 1099 with the net results for the year. They do the paperwork. Futures are "settled" every day in your account so if they are transferred between firms the basis is known. At least that is what I was told, I've never transferred futures, just stocks and options.

Jack

 

[bighitter1]

trader status tell me were ib's 1099 sales and buys for stocks are?i've done 10's of thousands of trades with ib and i see no 1099 with all the trades listed. i see a consolidated full year statement that shows all my trades for the year but not a breakdown of buys and sells

 

[traderstatus]

Quote from bighitter1:trader status tell me were ib's 1099 sales and buys for stocks are?i've done 10's of thousands of trades with ib and i see no 1099 with all the trades listed. i see a consolidated full year statement that shows all my trades for the year but not a breakdown of buys and sells

I did not mean to suggest that IB gives their customers a user-friendly, meaningfully formatted report sutable for IRS reporting. What they give is what you pay for. For $1 you can't even buy a cup of coffee, so it is not surprising what IB provides as to "extras."

But with this raw data the trader or his staff or his accountant can get what they need out of it, as well as potentially locate IB errors in their summarization as found at the top of the full-year stmt.

Just yesterday I found a whopper of an IB summarization error for a client when my proofing of the IB data came up with a large data inconsistancy.

 

[traderstatus]

Quote from Beach Man:Aren't short term capital gains reported on the same Form as dividends? .. and long term capital gains reported on 1099 B ?

Beach Man you are thinking for the unique rules of a mutual fund that must distribute its earnings each year in order to maintain its tax-free status.

For mutual funds their short-term gains are considered a dividend for tax reporting purposes. Only long-term gains on the holdings of the fund are reportd as "capital gains" on form 1099-DIV.

 

[bighitter1]

funny you say that because i'm with firms that charge 20 cents for 100 shares and 40 cents for 200 and there tax reporting and software is awesome. so i diasgree with you get what you pay for. anyway you answered your own question. THATS WHY 1 LINE ACCOUNTIN G IS MUCH MORE ACCURATE. I PAY TAX ON WHATS IN MY ACCOUNT AT END OF THE YEAR PERIOD