Tom, thank you for the clear explanation; I am in a similar situation and have a follow up question.
In my case I am claiming close to 60K in loss - so it will take take 20 years to take advantage of the deductions (3x20). To make the matter worse, my passive income is not even 3K per year (excluding stock, which I typically do not sell). My question is this - assuming that my passive income is around 2k (CDs etc), would it make sense to sell some stock each year (to show additional 1K profit) so that I can fully take advantage of 3k deduction , as small as it is. Otherwise, I will probably be dead before being able to deduct the whole loss amount 🙂
Thanks!
