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| stockmarkettips |
 Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 5:47 pm Post subject: Day Trading and Tax Hassle |
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Investing Manager
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| I don't day trade, but I'm curious about how one does their taxes who day trades. Do you have to record every transaction at the end of the year? Are there any online brokerages that do all this math for you? |
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| Im Not Warren Buffett |
| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 6:41 pm Post subject: |
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CFO
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| I have a friend who is a very active trader - probably pays about $1000/month in trading fees - and he mostly just disappeared for a week leading up to tax day. |
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| deprived |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 4:18 am Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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yea, most broker houses abandon you during tax tme- it your responsiblitiy to process your tax info. The tax rules for now (subject to change) is short term stocks, trading within 1 year and a day is subject to the 30% tax bracket. Long term trades over the 1 yr 1 day rule is sbject to 20% percent bracket. The extra 1 day part is to ensure you don't sell 1 day to early and get hit with the 30%. The borker houses will send you a copy/electronic delivery a copy of your Form 1099-DIV, but you must do all the math.
i suggest to open a savings account and depositing the appropriate tax amount into it - (Do not withdraw until tax day). I would not try to adjust for losses until the end of the year- this way you may have a little left over you get to keep. |
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| stockmarkettips |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 1:55 pm Post subject: |
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Investing Manager
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| it sure would be nice if a place like ameritrade could just export the data in a file format that a place like turbotax could read. it's a hassle to enter a buy date, sell date, cost basis, etc for every single stock you sell. |
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| entreri28 |
| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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New Poster
Joined: 18 Jul 2007
Posts: 2
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| If a person was going to day trade, would Zecco be the best? Since they have free trades and low commission after the free trades. I was just thinking of trying day trading myself, but I don't have lots of money to start with. |
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| Staggs |
| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
Joined: 19 Jun 2007
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Ya know, it's really a shadow area. If you claim taxe or not I suppose.  |
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| akshaytalwar |
| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 1:41 am Post subject: |
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Investing Associate
Joined: 18 May 2008
Posts: 21
This Month: 0
11244.67 e$
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Whether you calculate your taxes yourself or hire a professional, you're going to love our new tax tools.
Built directly into our trading application (look for them in the "Account Statement" tab) our tax tools use a real-time trade matching engine that makes preparing your Schedule D (or cleaning it up for your tax preparer) much much easier.
Step 1 - Collect all documents
In late January we publish your tax worksheet which contains most of the information you will need to complete the trade transaction portion of the Schedule D Form for your thinkorswim account.
By early February all US citizens will also receive a paper copy of their 1099 and year-end tax statement from Penson (our clearing firm.) These documents reflect what Penson is reporting to the US government.
Step 2 - Get your hands dirty
1/31/2007
tax chat transcript
tax handbook
Whether you plan on calculating your taxes yourself or hiring a professional the next step is to address any issues or inconsistencies in your tax worksheet.
For example, we have added the commissions you have paid to your cost basis and subtracted commissions and SEC fees from your proceeds but you may also need records of any relevant transactions that occurred prior to this tax year or in another account, or for corporate actions that involved symbol changes. Most exercises and assignments should be reflected, but stock acquired or sold through exercises or assignments is not updated with the option trade information.
There are a few ways to get your Schedule D information ready for the IRS:
GOOD Download your trading activity from the "data download" tab on the Penson Resources webpage and import your trading activity into Microsoft Money, Quicken or anything else that supports .OFX or .QFX file formats.
...download trade data >
BETTER Download our tax worksheet and import into your favorite spreadsheet program (or anything else that supports .CSV file formats.)
...download tax worksheet >
BEST Use the tax tools within our application (which automatically grabs your tax worksheet so there's no need to download it.)
...see tax tools >
BEST Use your favorite personal finance or tax preparation software to connect directly to Penson's OFX server (look for "Penson Financial" among the list of approved brokers and clearing firms).
...learn how >
BEST We have also partnered with GainsKeeper and Trade Accountant, two of the trading industry's best tax lot accounting and Schedule D preparation software solutions, to make this job easier. Both sync directly to our clearing firm so there is no need to download your tax worksheet.
...see below > |
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