Commodity Trading Online

I used Turbo Tax in the past when I only traded stocks, but since I now trade commodities also it does not seem to be as easy and I could not figure out how to make the entries corrrectly. I even asked one of their techs and I don't think they understood how to enter commodities trades correctly.

I think you can still use Turbo Tax. Just create an excel spreadsheet with the usual information (purch date, cost, sales date, sales proceeds, short term capital gain (loss), and long term capital gain (loss) and name the spreadsheet "Attachment A." Subtotal your short term transactions and long term transactions separately, then a final total for both.

Then go into Turbo Tax and on Schedule D, just put one line item for all the commodities. Call it, "Please see Attachment A," put in the total gross sales proceeds and cost for the short term transactions, then do another line with the same exact description but only put in the long term transactions. These two line items on the tax return then must match your Attachment A.

Now this is where it might get tricky. I don't know if in Turbo tax, you can tell it whether the software that the gain is long term and short term. It should.

Oh, if it works, be sure to attach the excel schedule as the last page to the tax return.

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