INVESTORS
SERVICES: TAX PREPARATION FOR INVESTORS

Preparation and planning of federal and state income tax returns for traders (retail, proprietary, hedge funds, and management companies [both individuals and entities]) is our core business.

In our tax preparation service, we distinguish between "Investors" and "Business Traders."

• While both may be active traders with complex tax treatment and accounting issues for trading gains and losses, business traders get unlimited business deductions, while investors can't deduct home office and education expenses, plus investors face many restrictions on allowable investment expenses. The average tax savings for business traders versus investors is around $8,000. But, investors still need us to make sure their trade accounting is correct and to maximize investment expenses. More importantly, we use our industry-leading judgment to determine if you qualify for trader tax status. We often help clients qualify in the current year, while we prepare their tax returns for the past year. In many cases, if you qualify in the current year, it's better to capitalize your prior year investment expenses to deduct them as start-up business expenses in the current year. Investors need us too and we offer them a break on our fees.
  
  
• Business traders may also elect (on time) Section 475 MTM ordinary loss treatment on securities, avoiding wash sales and capital loss limitations. Some clients have gotten refund checks in the hundreds of thousands of dollars from net operating loss (NOL) carryback returns, and they couldn't get any of that as an investor. One key strategy that we utilize is dealing with significant capital loss carryovers. You want subsequent capital gains treatment to use up capital loss carryovers. Yet, if you have new trading losses, you prefer Section 475 MTM ordinary business loss treatment. We navigate out of this hole with entities. See our entities page to learn more. Again, if you're an investor and becoming a business trader soon, we can help you with these strategies too.
  
  
• Business traders should consider forming an entity to save taxes with retirement plans and health-insurance premium deductions. Although investment companies can try these strategies too, they're often tax inefficient and potentially costly, with self-employment taxes costing more than income tax savings. For business traders, it's almost always tax beneficial with net savings of several thousand dollars up to $17,000 for a married couple. Click here for a retainer when ready.

2011 tax returns:

• It's the official start of the 2011 tax preparation and filing season. As you get bombarded with advertising for free online tax solutions with online chats and accuracy guarantees, consider that those savings may be $100 for a software charge. The big problem is that active traders will probably overpay or underpay their taxes by thousands of dollars. Guarantees don't cover leaving out trader tax status, choosing the incorrect tax treatment, or using the wrong trade accounting net income or loss. So, while these solutions may sound attractive to simple wage earners, they are the wrong solutions for business traders, who have many tax pitfalls and opportunities for significant tax savings too. But, most accountants are not familiar with trader tax savings strategies, and it's well beyond the parameters of what these services and local accountants can offer.
  
  If you're speaking with a local tax professional, find out if he or she is qualified to deal with your special tax needs. Ask them if you qualify for trader tax status (business treatment), if you can use Section 475 MTM ordinary loss treatment, how to handle ETF options and spot forex, if you can do a retirement plan contribution and deduct health insurance premiums in connection with your trading gains, if you owe self-employment tax on trading gains, and what types of business or investment expenses you can deduct (i.e. is education included). If they draw a blank on any of these questions – they very likely will - then you should get up and walk away. Many local CPAs prefer that traders work with trader tax experts, as they don’t want tax preparer penalties either. With complicated new 1099-Bs coming this tax season – which are still not good enough for tax reporting – it’s another excellent year to use our content, trader tax guides, trade-accounting software, and consulting and tax preparation services.
  
  Tax preparation is our most popular service and we guarantee you will be very pleased with our great prices, fast service and wonderful customer experience. Just read our many great testimonials. We've been the respected, trusted and leading CPA firm for online traders since day one. We have the best, most experienced trader-tax preparation CPAs in the country. Click here for retainer when ready.

• Entities. Now is an excellent time to form a new entity for 2012. An entity helps with trader tax status (business-expense deduction) issues and unlocks the additional tax savings for 2012 AGI-deduction strategies (retirement plans and health insurance premiums). Click here to learn more on our entities page.
  
  
• Our 2011 tax preparation service covers 2012 tax planning too. We address ongoing trader tax status, accounting, 2012 quarterly estimated tax payments, entities, tax-treatment election deadlines, retirement plans, health insurance and much more. 2012 is an important tax planning year with the Bush-era tax cuts scheduled to expire at year-end.
  
  
• 2011 Tax Extensions: If you don't file your tax returns on time, file for an automatic extension, which is only valid if you pay 90% of your tax liability with the extension filing on time. Also, make sure to include your Section 475 MTM election with that extension too if you want that important election. The automatic extension is until Sept. 15 for partnerships, LLCs filing as partnerships and S-corps, and Oct. 15 for individuals, including single-member LLCs that are disregarded entities. It's better to sign up with us before the extension so we can deal with trader tax status and the mark-to-market election strategy on time. There are consequences for missing tax filing and election deadlines, including penalties and jeopardizing tax treatment.
  

Tax Planning: We recommend tax planning throughout the year — on quarterly estimated income taxes due, Section 475 MTM and Section 988 forex opt-out elections, entities, retirement plans, and other tax savings strategies. Start here. The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2012 on all taxpayers. Therefore, for 2011 year-end planning, there was no need to consider accelerating income, which could be a good idea toward the end of 2012. There are some annual tax extenders that Congress must deal with again in early 2012. Congress already passed the annual AMT inflation patch for 2011, but it has not done that patch yet for 2012. For these reasons, we didn't do a major update to our 2011 year-end tax planning content. We will have a major update going into year-end 2012 and there should be lots of action in this election year. Much may not happen until the lame-duck session after the November Presidential and Congressional elections.

Prior Years: The 2010 income tax filing deadline was Oct. 17, 2011. We are happy to help you with late tax returns, NOL carryback returns, and amended returns. The IRS will eventually catch up with you, mostly due to 1099 filings (and the IRS’s matching program). If you are flagged in the IRS’s system, it will then most likely send you a jeopardy (estimate) assessment, which may include a large amount of taxes, penalties, and interest due. Act on your own earlier to improve your chances when seeking abatement of penalties. Penalties on pass-through entity tax returns have increased considerably.

RETAINERS:

GTT Investor Tax Return Preparation Service - Retainer & Minimum Fee If you have a special need this year on prices or retainer, please let us know about it. We want to accommodate you, as we value long-term relationships. Business traders sign up for our retainer here. Hedge funds sign up for our retainer here. Non-traders sign up here. $650

Learn more about our tax preparation service:
Deliverables: What you can expect to receive with our service.
GTT advantage: Why you should select GTT as your tax preparer.
Virtual process: Efficiency, effectiveness, documentation, convenience, and personal touch.
IRS exams: How we'll represent you in front of the IRS.
Prior year returns (we review them to see if you benefit from an amended return).
Costs: Retainer, fees & quotes.
e-filing.
Proprietary Traders.
Late Returns.
Entity Tax Returns.
Last-minute Filers.

If you have any questions about our trader tax preparation services, please contact us at info@greencompany.com or call us.

We are e-filing most federal and state tax returns again this year. We simply push a button in our software and your return is filed. E-filing is easier and less expensive than delivering paper returns, and your tax return and refunds are processed faster.

Important note about e-filing trader returns: See our above paragraph about why it's a good time to switch to GTT TradeLog for tax return filings. IRS statements insist that taxpayer's include line-by-line reporting of trades on Schedule D-1 with e-filed returns. Attachments, in lieu of Schedule D-1 are allowed by the IRS for paper-filed returns only (not e-filed returns). GTT TradeLog is an excellent solution for both e-filing and paper-filed returns.