Kim Snider

Kim Snider Alumni

Welcome and thanks for visiting my website! Please feel free to look around at your convenience. The navigation bar at the left and bottom will help guide you.

You're probably here for one reason ... you need help with your Schedule D-1. Well, you have come to the right place! I have over forty Kim Snider alumni as clients now. If you are one of them, thank you. Also, please provide feedback for others on Kim's website.

Feel free to read the information below regarding the popular reporting downloads and why I developed my own.

If you're just ready to get your Schedule D-1 done, then click here.

Tax Reporting

You're familiar with gains and losses but are you familiar with the term "wash sale"? If not, then you need to be if you trade covered calls on a monthly basis.

You need to capture all this information for two basic reasons: (1) to determine your investment performance, and (2) to report it to the IRS on your tax return. If you only have a few trades you can probably determine both with a self-developed spreadsheet. But if there are many trades, with wash sales, stock splits, reverse splits and spin-offs ... well, it can get pretty difficult, even for a CPA.

There is software that can be purchased online to help you. However, a few questions will obviously arise:

Do I know how to get the correct information into the software?
What do I do with the output?
How do I put it on my tax return?
Is it correct? What do I tie the amounts to?
When do I report December option sales?
What about the closing of positions in January?
If I 'bundle' are those shares really sold?

► You know by now what I'm leading up to ... let us do it for you!

I was not satisfied with the input, output or accuracy of the aforementioned downloadable software ... so I wrote my own. As you see in my resume, I began my career as a programmer with Arthur Andersen and continued to expand my programming skills with Microsoft products. I use a combination of Access and Excel to produce the tax reporting forms. Samples are available here.

The process is simple for us to prepare your Schedule D-1/Form 6781:

	Download the updated instructions for getting your optionsXpress information to us.

	Download your information from optionsXpress (included in instructions)

	E-mail information to us

○	Original transaction activity from broker in Excel format

○	Form 1099-B (pdf, fax or email)

○	December year-end statement with year-end holdings (pdf, fax or email)

	You will receive via email

○	Transmittal letter explaining how to incorporate forms into your tax return

○	Schedule D-1 for attachment to your Schedule D

○	Form 6781 for attachment to your Form 1040 (if applicable)

○	Addendum to Jurat - We sign as "Paid Preparer" for the Schedule D-1 and the Jurat is attached to your return so that the IRS knows who prepared it. In other words, we take responsibility ... you don't get that with downloadable software

○	Report of 'Open Shares' with the carryover cost basis to the subsequent year

○	Invoice for services - our billing rates are $120 per hour billed in 15 minute increments with a minimum of $150 - most taking less than three hours for about a five page Schedule D-1. We will be happy to provide an estimate once we examine your information. See samples of what you get.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions via email or telephone.

I hope to hear from you soon!

I think the two most popular downloadable products are TradeLog® and GainsKeeper®. I have evaluated both with the following comments:

GainsKeeper®

	Free at some broker's websites (optionsXpress) and at a minimum stock trading level

	Produces a Schedule D-1 that can be filed with your tax return

	No ability to format output, i.e., reporting in whole dollars only

	I used it for my data once just to see how it performed ... it was off over $48,000 one year and over $25,000 the next year

	The majority of my clients who have used GainsKeeper also question its accuracy

TradeLog®

	Technically accurate and fast if input correctly

	Multiple input formats for multiple brokerages

	Technical support available online or via telephone

	TradeLog cannot handle spin-offs automatically (I haven't found a package that can)

	You need to be good at downloading data from you broker, capturing it in a particular file format and transferring it into TradeLog

	The output is a report that is attached to the tax return. Although technically correct, are you sure you completely understand it and if not, as a do-it-yourselfer, would you attach something to your tax return you don't completely understand?

	Here are some samples of TradeLog output including my comments (Note: These examples were run with a version of TradeLog purchased in 2005 so the errors and reporting may have been corrected and/or changed)