have not done taxes in years

[nickjwellis]

ok, so this is going to sound weird, but i am married and used to be in the army, i left the army and still married, my wife makes the money and im a stay at home dad, but my wife has filed taxes jointly in the past 3 years since we where married, but in the last 3 years since i been a stay at home dad i have dabbiled here and there with crypto, stocks, and forex, now i have lost a lot of money and never actually made money over the last 3 years, and i never withdrew any amount of money ever, since i didnt actually make any money and any money spent i lost, and i keep putting extra money that i have laying around into the market, so i have put almost 5k into the market this time to really start taking it seriosly. the 5k is divided into a bunch of things such as crypto, stocks, and forex, i really dont want to pull any money out because i dont see the need, but i seen a video saying that i need to do taxes on trades even if i do not make money on them or even if lose my money, but i have made thousands of trades over the 3 years of learning the market, and since i never made money i never felt to actually do taxes on them, so i am curios how would i go about doing taxes in the future if i where to make money.

[fanfare]

you filed a joint return with your combined wages but only one wage earner.

If you did not report your stock market losses in a regular investment account, you lose the capital loss deduction for those years.

BUT 

if you lost money in your IRA, there's nothing to do. you can't report it.

--

IRS requires details of your SELL transactions in a regular account, whether a loss or gain.

You should have been getting a 1099-B statement from your brokerages.

I guess you just ignored them.

[AamilD]

You still need to report all transactions even if you did not withdraw money. For stocks, your brokerage would have provided you with a Form 1099-B which would list all the information you need to file your taxes. Even if you did not make money, you still need to report this since if you had a loss you can deduct up to $3,000 from other income each year. Additionally, if you had more then $3,000 loss in a given year, you can carry forward the leftover portion and use the unused loss to next year's gains or up to $3,000 of other income.

Additionally, you will need to amend your prior year returns to report these transactions even if you did not withdraw any money. A Taxable event occurs when you sell the security, even if you don't withdraw the money. Please visit How to amend (change or correct) a return you've already filed for instructions on how to amend prior year returns. 

As you mentioned, that you did not make any gains from the trading and instead had losses, when you amend, you can claim these losses against other capital gains or up to $3,000 of other income and carry forward the remaining unused capital losses. If you amend, based on the information you have provided, this will most likely increase your refund for prior years ( exceptions apply). 

You can contact your brokerage companies and they will be able to provide you with a Form 1099-B and/or Form 1099-DIV for the current year and prior years. When you have these forms, you can enter them in TurboTax.