You are intermixing a number of concepts that are neither mutually-exclusive nor necessarily connected.
As a personal or individual taxpayer, you are able to use any capital loss to offset capital gains, to the point, if the numbers work out, that you wash away all gains with losses current or prior year carry forwards. If any capital loss still remains, that cannot be matched against capital gains, then up to $3,000 of loss can be offset against ordinary income.
That is the story for an individual.
For a business firm, the rules and accounting are totally different and very dependent on the nature of the business and for the most part not capable of being compared to your experience as an individual taxpayer.
SEE PDF example
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