Wash Sale Rule - SPY & QQQ Considered "Substantially Identical"?

[Zwaeback]

Hi,

I'm going to stop trading SPY options for the year to give 31+ days for the wash sales to clear by late January. (this is the same approach I've taken the last couple years)

I'm looking for an alternate security to trade for early to mid January. This is a longshot, but does anyone have experience with whether the IRS would flag QQQ as "substantially identical" to SPY?

My brokerage only calculates the wash sales for the exact same securities. They wouldn't flag QQQ.

Personally, I consider SPY & QQQ to be quite different. SPY = 500 largest companies. QQQ =100 mainly tech companies.

Thanks for your help!

[M-MTax]

No, not even close to substantially identical. 

Those two ETFs don't even have the same number of securities in them based on their indices; SPY tracks the S&P 500 which has 500 stocks while QQQ tracks the NASDAQ 100 index which is the 100 largest, non-financial, corporations on the NASDAQ.

[Zwaeback]

M-MTax - Thank you for your reply!