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Has anyone done that? Any experiences? https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2010/feb/sec4...

One thing that was a PITA when actively trading MI screens is wash sales.
On the one hand, they don't really matter as it is just pushing around when taxes are paid on gains.
However, if you trade in both taxable and non-taxable accounts, you lose the tax deduction for losses.
It is not clear to me whether brokerages look across all accounts when determining wash sales.
But strictly speaking the IRS does not care, it is up to you to report things correctly.

I've read that the mark-to-market tax election is a way to avoid that, assuming one qualifies.
For an active MI trader, I believe it is possible. However, there are probably pluses and minuses to doing this.

Mark

Quite a while back and for several years I used MTM and used the services of https://greentradertax.com.

I had some large losses and it helped me with writing those losses off. I stopped my high risk trading and stopped the bleeding and no longer needed to use that method.

This is not a recommendation for https://greentradertax.com, it is just one of the services that might help if you are a very active trader.

I've been using MTM trading for a long time to good advantage for my trading account . I've used your link for some great info, too.
Interactive Brokers is now my only MTM account. They have shockingly exquisitely detailed trade information reporting for MTM, but despite extensive efforts I've been unable to use their Flex report-building capabilities to build the Schedule D format the IRS requires (even for MTM).
[i.e.,
(a) Desc of Property
(b) Date acq
(c) Date sold
(d) Gross sales price
(e) Cost or other basis
(h) GAIN or (LOSS)]

Has anyone worked out an IB Flex algorithm for IRS-compliant MTM tax reporting? I know it's possible (& probably pretty easy) but I'm just not skilled/knowledgable enough. I spend a lot of time every year Excel-hand-modifying the IB 1099. I'm pretty sure a lot of IB MTM traders would like to know this - if they don't already. ;-)
Thanks in advance, & apologies in advance for the drill-down specificity of the request.
:-)Shawn

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