Tax Preparation
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to be legal per irs you must list every trade for equities.
I used Simply Track for the last 3 years:
http://www.vbssol.com
and you can import your trades and it outputs the schedule D that you can just attach to your tax return. It does wash sales calculations too. I don't know about futures though, I only trade stocks.
http://www.vbssol.com
and you can import your trades and it outputs the schedule D that you can just attach to your tax return. It does wash sales calculations too. I don't know about futures though, I only trade stocks.
+1 for tradelog as spindr0 said. In my opinion, the best solution is tradelog + turbotax. For those afraid of an audit, turbotax offers a service for $40 that will help you with the IRS in case of an audit. This could be a steal at 10x the price. Strongly suggest looking through the tradelog website for general trader tax info. Disclaimer: I receive absolutely no compensation from tradelog or turbotax - I pay them every year.
Or you could just trade 1256 cars and only have to report the net gain/loss
http://www.tradelogsoftware.com/
Or you could just trade 1256 cars and only have to report the net gain/loss
http://www.tradelogsoftware.com/
Except that Turbotax has limitations when it comes to how big of a number you can input in any one field. It tells you to upgrade to their super expensive versions in order to handle a number larger than what they want you to handle. I call that a ripoff considering that implementing fields that can handle larger numbers is absolutely trivial.
I would love to hear what anyone thinks of "Simply Track", and or "Track Your Trades". I am debating between both of them. I want to do taxes myself this year.
Track Your Trades was developed by a PhD., and what attracts me is than unlike TradeLog, you pay only one time and you own the software for life. It also has a choice of wash sale tracking nonsense for non professionals, or Mark to Market, which I need.
Why would I want to keep paying TradeLog if I do not have to?
www.trackyourtrades.com Anyone?
Track Your Trades was developed by a PhD., and what attracts me is than unlike TradeLog, you pay only one time and you own the software for life. It also has a choice of wash sale tracking nonsense for non professionals, or Mark to Market, which I need.
Why would I want to keep paying TradeLog if I do not have to?
www.trackyourtrades.com Anyone?
Just get tradelog and be done with it...i trade equities, options and futures and have used it the last two years to cover thousands of transactions. I then use Taxact to actually file my taxes, as the two are compatible and large transaction levels.
I tried like hell to find a service to do the whole thing for me before i resorted to this, but just forget about it. You won't find an accountant who understands complex trader filing, and even if you do, they will effectively expect all the Schedule D work done in advance anyway. So you would need tradelog in either case.
You can do it yourself, but at some point the import feature on tradelog makes it all worth it...if you just have 100 or 200 transactions or less, maybe its overkill.
I tried like hell to find a service to do the whole thing for me before i resorted to this, but just forget about it. You won't find an accountant who understands complex trader filing, and even if you do, they will effectively expect all the Schedule D work done in advance anyway. So you would need tradelog in either case.
You can do it yourself, but at some point the import feature on tradelog makes it all worth it...if you just have 100 or 200 transactions or less, maybe its overkill.