There are two systems of taxation in our country: One for the informed and one for the uninformed. - Judge Learned Hand

There should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax. - Sen. Barney Frank (youtube)

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. - Pres. Calvin Coolidge

The most dangerous thing you can do to any businessman in America is to keep him in doubt, and to keep him guessing on what our tax policy is. - Pres. Lyndon B Johnson

Our tax code is so complicated, we've made it nearly impossible for even the Internal Revenue Service to understand. - Treas. Paul O'Niell

I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress. - Pres. Ronald Reagan

Looking for tax deductions?

Short-term trading is fast... exciting... profitable... challenging... and tax deductible!

When you tally up your results each year - do you see the capital gain tax taking away too much from your hard won trading profits? As an active trader do you find that you have too little time at the end of the day to do the necessary tax planning to avoid paying excessive income taxes? What is the real story behind all the talk about the tax benefits from choosing trader status and electing mark to market?

When is a CPA firm needed?

Serving Traders for over 20 years!        We'd Like to hear from you

Here at TraderStatus.com™ we will bring together in one place the information necessary to help you survive unnecessarily high short-term capital gain taxes, self-employment taxes and state and federal income taxes. To accomplish this, often a separate trading entity is the answer, but just as often we avoid it as not being cost effective in a particular situation.

Many traders do not yet even realize that they are paying far too much to the Federal Government. Existing, proven legal procedures, which in many cases can significantly reduce taxes each and every year, are available to anyone qualified to elect to use them.

As we all eventually learn, those low capital gain tax rates of 15% or lower are not available for the daytrader's lightning fast trading profits. Rather, an individual daytrader's gains (or losses) are subject to the higher ordinary income tax rates!

Investors and securities traders may incur substantial costs with on-line fees, commissions, real-time data-feeds, computer equipment and so on. The Internal Revenue Service, on their own, do not treat most taxpayers very fairly when it comes to deducting these expenses. Leaving it up to the IRS publications and instructions, at best, a taxpayer must first qualify to itemize his deductions on Schedule A - making those deductions subject to a 2% of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) reduction and for some high-income taxpayers even an additional 3% of AGI reduction.

Please take the time to read and understand the information found on our web site and also on the Discussion Board as it can be very helpful to you when preparing your taxes and when planning your tax strategies.  Every month we hear from taxpayers who found this web site too late or after they already paid someone for a download that contained nothing more than the basic information here available to you for free.  Taxpayers who were ill-advised by normally very competent CPAs and other tax practitioners, but for whom the tricks and traps  of Trader Status were unknown to them.

A good CPA does not need to know everything, he only needs to know where to look it up when a problem arises, or when he's doing your tax planning.  Unfortunately the hard facts are that, when it comes to traders in securities and traders in commodities, many tax advisors have no clue that there even is a Trader Status issue to look up, let alone having the practical hands-on experience necessary to be aware of the tricks and traps to be found!

Proposed IRS Regulation 1.1411-5 targets gains from securities traders, futures traders and forex traders for imposition of the 3.8% surtax. IRC §1411 - November 30, 2012

For 2013 as was the case for 2012 & 2011, taxpayers with any financial account maintained by a foreign financial institution or any securities issued by someone that is not a U.S. person may be required to file IRS Form 8938 along with their regular income tax forms. Taxpayers are subject to a $10,000 late filing penalty and the burden of compliance for some European institutions is too expensive and will result in closing accounts held by U.S. citizens. -  derived from IRS announcements, January 2012