Is Tradelog or Gainskeeper necessary?

P

probability_man

I declared MTM in 2007 and will be filing my 2007 taxes tomorrow(deadline for extension). I have a large net operating loss. I'm trying to make sure I do everything right so that the IRS doesn't try to deny my NOL.

I went through my broker's P&L statement and the combined the 1099 statement they sent. The numbers match up. I am wondering if there is any reason for me to buy Tradelog or Gainskeeper? Right now I am planning on just using any old basic tax software for the rest of my return, printing it out, and then attaching a huge stack of papers (all of my trades, forms 3115,4797, footnotes) and mailing it certified mail. Anyone know if there is tax software that can completely efile thousands of trades, plus the other forms and footnotes?
Would the IRS be more pleased if I used tradelog or gainskeeper, or doesn't it make a difference since all my trades match up?



BoughtRobert Green's book from a bookstore quite awhile ago and read it, so I'm not new to this stuff but I want to make sure I do everything perfectly.

Will be staying up all night tonight checking my work.
 
Be careful if you consider Tradelog.

I have been screwed up by this guy. He is not able to program correctly date arithmetic. How can one trust tax report for such sw.
 
Quote from probability_man:
Would the IRS be more pleased if I used tradelog or gainskeeper, or doesn't it make a difference since all my trades match up?
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If you are MTM and everything matches then you really don't need Tradelog or Gainskeeper. The main reason you would use TradeLog is when things don't match up which happens to be quite often, or you need to calculate wash sales, or you wish to do some analysis on your trade history.
 
Quote from probability_man:

Does Tradelog work well on Vista? Is it buggy?
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We have many Vista users and have tens thousands of users who successfully filed their taxes using our TradeLog software in the past 8 years. To date we have not had one return come back from the IRS due to our gains & losses report.
 
In general, the tradelog is a sack of bugs. The guy is not able to implement correctly date arithmetic.
I am a former this sw.
 
Quote from a5519:

In general, the tradelog is a sack of bugs. The guy is not able to implement correctly date arithmetic.
I am a former this sw.
More...
Mr. a5519 has not used our software since 2002. He was using a non-US windows setup for date/time, which at the time we did not support because our software was designed primarily for the US market. He could have easily switched to a US date/time windows setting which would have fixed his problem but he was only argumentive.

Since that time we updated our software to allow for Windows international date/time settings to allow users in any country in the world to use our TradeLog software.

In addition, Mr a5519 was using Interactive Brokers who was notorious for changing their trade history statements which caused us to keep updating our IB import filter. These updates were usually released in a matter of days, which is unheard of in the software business.

Since then IB has created a special TradeLog trade history report which was designed by us so that we no longer have to support a moving target. This report is far superior to any other IB report for taxes and fully supports futures unlike most of our competitors.

His assertion that we do not use proper arithmetic is totally ridiculous. We have tens of thousands of users in the past 8 years who succesfully filed their taxes with no such math problems. We have been written up in various magazines such as Barrons and Forbes and are recommended by some of the top trader tax accountants in the US. This would not be the case if our arithmetic was wrong.

Mr a5519 only pokes his nose into these tax discussions to trash our software. Please see what most users are saying about TradeLog and Interactive Brokers at http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/general/poll/ibconsultants.php?ib_entity=llc - click on the Reporting & Tax Tools tab and then click the plus sign next to Read Comments to see what I mean.
 
Tradelog has worked well for me in the past, and is priced well.

Is it necessary? I don't know....are you hiding something? Can you settle with the IRS for pennies on the dollar if they challenge your cost basis? Do you have a banker at UBS who can hide your asets offshore? (oh, never mind on that question). Does your father run a fancy law firm in NY specializing in tax law, or does daddy know the former General Counsel at the SEC ala George Bush? You have to decide if its necessary. How well are you protected from asset seizure or personal persecution?

For normal people you have to cover your ass. The IRS has a standard tactic as standard operating procedure: Go after the guy least able to defend himself.
 
tradelog is good but honestly its not neccesary.many co's like ib give you the d-1 and its accurate to the penny. also for people who trade thousands to 10's of thousands of times its worthless . brokers like penson list all your buys and sells and add them up on both sides so thats your profit
 
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