#1
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Tax question about short term losses vs long term gains
If I want to tax harvest my investment account (short term losses) how much can I deduct from long term gains?
In other words if i want to sell long term winners can I offset that against short term losers? I read somewhere about only being able to deduct 3k against income but that doesn't seem like much - how do day traders handle their taxes? Must a be a nightmare. Any help or insight appreciated. |
#2
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You can cancel them
You can offset long-term gains with short-term losses.
Ideally, of course, you'd prefer to use your short-term losses to offset short-term gains, because short-term gains are taxed at a higher rate. However, sometimes you don't have any short-term gains. http://taxes.yahoo.com/guide/begin/gainplan.html For daytraders, the accounting is pretty easy. Everything is short-term, and so you can measure + Account Value Dec 31 - Account Value Jan 01 - Capital Contributions during year and get the total gains, all of which are short-term. I believe the IRS permits you to simply report the gain as income and skip the details of the trades you made. Caveat: I am not a daytrader. |
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