After many years as an investor, I've been seriously day trading for almost 10 years. Each year has resulted in more trading and a longer Schedule D which I have always done myself w/o an IRS problem. Although I didn't prepare my return properly, the taxable amount was correct. IOW, if I had wash sales during the year, if I avoided the underlying for 30 days in January, it wasn't a violation so the taxable amount was the same.
Last year was a break out year for me in terms of profit and number of transactions. Because I do a huge amount of pairs trading which usually involves 2 or more stocks (group trading?), inherently, many of them were losers. I n my case last year, it was 26% of total shares.
All of this is irrelevant except that last month, despite having a long list of "do not trade" stocks, I traded 6 of them and opened Pandora's Box. After readings here and at some of the recommended tax sites, I realized that what came out of that box was a cluster f**king nightmare of wash sale paperwork from IRS regulations ... some of my pairs went on for several months with daily trading of multiple lots of differing sizes occasionally flipping from long to short. An accounting task beyond belief.
After dozens of wasted hours of work last month trying sort out this mess, a week ago I got Tradelog. Because I don't simply trust something because they say it works, I spent the past week (often until midnight after trading all day) breaking all my trades (1000's) out of my self prepared Sched D spreadsheets, doing the same for the program, and then merging them wherever they disagreed in order to verify who was right. In every instance, it wasn't me. And in mere minutes, it calculated everything properly.
While I read about other similar programs here on ET, I don't have a clue if I picked the best one (cost, effectiveness, support, whatever). I do know that the last thought I had before diving in was that it's only "X" dollars and if it works, the cost would be far less than the mmany hours wasted getting nowhere. This has been an accounting nightmare and that the end result is that I won't have to deal with it again. If you ever get intoi this kind of mess, do the research and take the plunge with some tax accounting program to make your life easier.
ANote to Sysop: if mentioning a product is a no-no, please delete its name and let the post fly.
Last year was a break out year for me in terms of profit and number of transactions. Because I do a huge amount of pairs trading which usually involves 2 or more stocks (group trading?), inherently, many of them were losers. I n my case last year, it was 26% of total shares.
All of this is irrelevant except that last month, despite having a long list of "do not trade" stocks, I traded 6 of them and opened Pandora's Box. After readings here and at some of the recommended tax sites, I realized that what came out of that box was a cluster f**king nightmare of wash sale paperwork from IRS regulations ... some of my pairs went on for several months with daily trading of multiple lots of differing sizes occasionally flipping from long to short. An accounting task beyond belief.
After dozens of wasted hours of work last month trying sort out this mess, a week ago I got Tradelog. Because I don't simply trust something because they say it works, I spent the past week (often until midnight after trading all day) breaking all my trades (1000's) out of my self prepared Sched D spreadsheets, doing the same for the program, and then merging them wherever they disagreed in order to verify who was right. In every instance, it wasn't me. And in mere minutes, it calculated everything properly.
While I read about other similar programs here on ET, I don't have a clue if I picked the best one (cost, effectiveness, support, whatever). I do know that the last thought I had before diving in was that it's only "X" dollars and if it works, the cost would be far less than the mmany hours wasted getting nowhere. This has been an accounting nightmare and that the end result is that I won't have to deal with it again. If you ever get intoi this kind of mess, do the research and take the plunge with some tax accounting program to make your life easier.
ANote to Sysop: if mentioning a product is a no-no, please delete its name and let the post fly.
