Mechanically, the carried over loss is applied to any current year capital gain, irrespective of whether that capital gain would be taxed at 0% (which only applies to long term capital gain, not short term capital gain), or not.
You say you have a capital gain from the sale of stocks of $21K-$22K and for sake of argument let's say that every sale of every stock was sold at a gain. But if during the year you sold one more security and this security sale resulted in a $5K capital loss, then your net capital gain for the year would be in the $16K-$17K range, and I expect you wouldn't be posting here asking why that $5K loss is being offset against your $21K-$22K gains. The carry over loss is being used in the exact same fashion that a current year loss would be handled. There's really no option to "defer" that loss until some day when you might "really" need it.
Tom Young
