At a loss...How to quickly calculate capital gains

March 9, 2010 10:09 AM

Hi! I live in Canada and am catching up on my taxes. While I was a student I was day trading through a discount brokerage. Upon my request for a summary of Capital Gains/Losses, the discount brokerage I use told me that this is something I have to do on my own.

I'm a bit lost.

I know I need to use my adjusted cost basis to calculate capital gains / losses. I know I need to watch out for superficial losses.

I have monthly transaction summaries for several years of trading.

Can you recommend an inexpensive, fast, painless way to do this?

I'm thinking that somewhere someone must have developed a spreadsheet or piece of software that will allow me to enter in all my BUY/SELL information and automagically spit out my yearly capital gains/losses.

I am only trading common shares. No dividends. No splits. No rights, warrents, etc.

Any ideas? Thanks so much for your time and help.

posted by stealabove to Work & Money (3 answers total)

I've had to do this too, it's a major pain. I never found software that seemed worth it but I had a smaller number of complex transactions, and it sounds like you have a larger number of simple transactions so you might have better luck. A Google search for "Schedule D software" turns up lots of results; here's one example that might be what you're looking for.

And if you ever go back to active trading, there are some online brokerages that do fill out a Schedule D for you -- here is one.
posted by pete_22 at 10:20 AM on March 9, 2010

Just caught the Canada part ...Schedule D is obviously the US form but I'm sure that some of these programs can work with the Canadian forms and rules too.
posted by pete_22 at 10:21 AM on March 9, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks Pete_22 - misery loves company and it's nice to know I'm not the only one feeling the pain.

I think the links you provided are particular to the US and am afraid that the rules may be slightly different here in Canada.

I've googled and googled and haven't come up with a foolproof way to do this. It may be that a piece of Canadian tax software is able to accommodate my needs but I am hoping for a solid recommendation from someone here telling me that YES this software will do exactly what you need.
posted by stealabove at 10:27 AM on March 9, 2010