Hacker News Reader

Comment by nashashmi | Hacker News Reader

Just print out the sheet from your broker of all the trades you did with the end result of gains circled. Send that in. You should be ok from doing anything more complex.

View on HN

If you buy or vest more shares, you might not be able to use capital losses to offset your gains until you understand the wash-sale rule.

You didn't hear this from me, but allegedly the IRS doesn't give a shit about wash sales via RSU vesting. YMMV, IANAL, IANAA, IARPA, etc etc

You are doing your taxes wrong and should be careful this ain't audited.

I don't know how that could be such a thing. Basically, you don't have to necessarily use any of their forms. You simply list down all income totaled by category of taxation, list out all value appreciation and depreciation that you are considering to be part of the year's gains and losses, and provide backup material of how you came to those numbers (if that is even necessary).

Taxes were made to be done on a simple blank sheet of paper. The forms are more instructional record keepers, than they are systems of procedure every taxpayer must follow.

are you referring to like when you do summarized trades? or something else?

Every transaction of stock should be listed. The broker will total the gains. If you want to play with the rules with a little bit more finesse (like trying to leverage the 30 day end of year rule), you will have to do this manually.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com