The New Traders's Tax Guide: The I.R.S insider's guide to the home based trading business and the use of legal entities for your trading capital

Dear Trader, We are continually asked for information on the taxation of futures. Many traders do not realize that there is a substantial difference between the taxation of stocks, options on stocks, and the taxation of futures, commodities, and options on indexes. Of even more concern to us is the fact that many of the accountants that are filling out the tax forms for these traders and investors don t appear to know the difference in the taxation either. This is troublesome for the trader who is making his living actively trading in the futures market place and as a result of hard work and many years of study is successful only to end up giving more of his trading profit to the governments than necessary because of an accountant who does not know the rules. If the trader himself were watching a company to invest in that gave away its profits in this manner he would only short it. We encourage all that read this book to understand that for any active trader, taxes are your biggest expense. It is up to the trader to assume the personal responsibility of understanding and implement a program to minimize the tax burdens.