Automating Sched. D wash sale accounting?

July 14, 2010 12:22 PM

Is there a way to automate wash sale accounting/schedule D preparation for a very active investor?

For my 2009 tax return I need to prepare a Schedule D for my voluminous stock/ETF trading (I am on extension for filing).

I literally have thousands of trades, many repeatedly in the same security. There will be many, many "wash sales" that I will need to account for. This is the first time I have this much trading activity to report.

I have all my trades in a CSV (comma separated value) that easily imports into excel or a database.

Is there any "utility" out there that can take my trade information, perform the wash sale accounting and put it into a schedule D friendly format?

posted by de void to Work & Money (4 answers total)

I use TradeLog. I had something like 6000+ stock and option trades last year and expect more this year. It can handle it with no performance hitch. I'd buy the 1 year subscription for the full version.
posted by An algorithmic dog at 12:27 PM on July 14, 2010

The other main option is GainsKeeper, which is often included in brokerage accounts but they sell a standalone version.
posted by smackfu at 12:28 PM on July 14, 2010

FWIW if you have a large number of trades TradeLog is going to end up being cheaper.
posted by An algorithmic dog at 12:35 PM on July 14, 2010

Response by poster: Follow up: with some better tuned googling I found the following excel VBA macro which purports to take TXF files as input and put out a schedule D including wash sale accounting. I have not tested it yet:

http://www.skill-guru.com/blog/2010/02/24/free-schedule-d-generator-with-wash-sale-calculation/
posted by de void at 8:43 AM on July 19, 2010