Your capital loss carryover is first used to offset any capital gain that you have this year. If that doesn't use up the carryover, up to $3,000 will be used to offset other income. So if you have capital gain, including capital gain distributions, it will almost always use more than $3,000 of the capital loss carryover. The total amount that's used is only limited to $3,000 if you have no capital gain.
