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Strategies & Market Trends : IRS, Tax related strategies--Traders -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: WallStBum who wrote (685)	2/1/1999 5:08:00 PM
From: Mark Ivan	Respond to of 1383

WallStBum, Oh, it can calculate gain/loss on shorts OK, it's the investment PERFORMANCE that is out of whack. It must take you gain and divide by the time held to get an Rate of Return. For time held, they must subtract the buy date from the sell date. Well, for a short sell, this comes out negative, thus you get a negative rate of rtn on a winning trade. Anyway, I keep all my trades in Quicken. I can even match lots up. In the end, like you said, it is useless for turbo tax with wash sales. I guess I'll set up an EXCEL sheet to recalculate cost basis. I am just gonna ignore the straddles and treat them as separte trades. I think the IRS still gets its correct money; I just may not be doing it their way. If they don't like it, they can do them for me :) Mark

To: WallStBum who wrote (685)	2/1/1999 6:14:00 PM
From: Spots	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1383

>> I'm surprised Quicken won't calculate gains and losses on a short sale correctly. You need to contact them directly ... Fat chance. Arrogant bunch in the first place, and in the second place there just isn't enough demand. Not one in 10,000 trades short or frequently enough for wash sales to matter, and probably only a small fraction of that has hedges and options. Collin says most at the IRS don't understand a wash sale, and I have no reason to doubt it. Quicken stock stuff is a joke, anyhow; what a mess. IRR is a laugh, and try to enter a broker transfer if you want a real yuk. Options? Forget it. How about a simple little ISO? Tell me another one. I wonder if there really is a big enough market for these transactions to make it worth doing right; just bookkeeping, I mean. That's the real problem, IMO; tiny market, it would cost too much. Turbotax doesn't do washes either, I hear. Why am I not surprised ... <g>.