Gains & Losses

It’s the end of the year and you have to organize all your trade data for tax reporting purpose. This usually causes a headache but with PortfolioTK it is no sweat. That’s because PortfolioTK has a built-in Gains and Losses reporting feature to aid you.

When you first click on the Gains and Losses menu, a window like the following will pop-up.

This dialog gathers information as to which Tax Year you would like to display trade information for. All trades closed in the specified year will be used for the report. Adding an Account Name will be used for organizational purposes to keep track of which account we are performing the report for. It can be anything you choose; from your name to your broker account id. After finishing, clicking Generate Report will produce a report similar to the following example report.

The columns are setup to match the Form 1040 Schedule D used for reporting your Gains and Losses. The cost basis used for calculations is based on your settings in the Preference menu, either First-in First-out (FIFO) or Last-in First-out (LIFO). By default, the program is set to use FIFO which is the most commonly used.

As previously discussed in the Trades section of this User’s Guide, full support for long and short trades is supported along with partial position matching. In the Trades tab, partial position matching calculations for Profit / Loss are done behind the scenes and are not broken down to show which position sold is matched with which specific position bought. This makes for easier viewing because you just want to see what the Profit and Loss was for the designated position.

However, for tax reporting each partial trade needs to be reported with which trade it matches to. Therefore, PortfolioTK automatically breaks down partial position trades and enters a new trade row in the Gains and Losses report to show how each and every trade matches the buy price and buy date to the sell price and sell date.

On the Form 1040 Schedule D, there is no place to put information about fees and commissions. So PortfolioTK adds all commissions and the purchase price together in one figure called Cost Basis. Cost basis is calculated as follows:

Cost Basis = Purchase Price + Purchase Commissions + Selling Commissions

The Profit or Loss for the specified trade is then calculated as follows:

Profit (or Loss) = Sales Price – Cost Basis

PortfolioTK’s Gains and Losses report is a great way of making your life easier by saving you time and money. So you generated the report, now what? The generated report has full capabilities for you to Print and take to the accountant that handles your taxes. However, you are also able to store the report for future reference. Clicking the save icon at the top of the report allows you to save either as an Excel document or an Adobe Acrobat PDF file.