I am an active day trader. I want to know if the TOTAL NET GAINS are the ones the IRS taxes, or is it all capital gain sales made with profit individually?
So is it total profits that get taxed or all total assets sold for gains?
Thank you
Your facts are limited, however, as general commentary:
This is a complicated area with a lot of tracking required.
For stock sales, you calculate long term and short term separately To calculate your taxable gains (or losses), you take the total of all your sales proceeds, and subtract the total cost basis for all of those sales. You do that for both long term and short term gain/loss. If you are a day trader, all of your gains will be short term. If you have a net short term gain, it is taxed as ordinary income. They do not tax individual trades. All your individual trades are netting for a single long term gain/loss amount, and a single short term gain/loss amount. If one is a gain and the other a loss, they will net against each other.