>As a newcomer to trading, I'm faced with my first tax return and
>have a potentially dumb question. Must I list EVERY transaction
>separately with gain/loss?
I give my accountant a spreadsheet printout showing all my trades,
I religiously update the Spreadsheet when I get a confirmation
in the mail from my broker. I trade several dozen times a year.
On my actual tax form, he enters my total short-term capital
gains, and in the section of the form where the trades are
normally entered, he puts "see attached statement A" -> which
is the spreadsheet printout showing buy/sell dates, stock symbol,
cost of purchase (less comm), total proceeds (after comm) and net
gain/loss, for each trade. In a non-printed part of the SS, I also
compute avg gain/loss per trade, ratio of winning trades to losing
trades, etc. This is all in Clarisworks SS on a MAC... simple.
The data is entered gradually, as trades occur, rather than
all at once at tax time, and the IRS gets what they want... |
