#Trading losses

[buzzzbyte]

Former Sydney FX trader sentenced for falsifying trading entries

Former Sydney Deutsche Bank FX options and futures trader, Andrew Donaldson, has been sentenced in the District Court in Sydney to 18 months imprisonment after pleading guilty to falsifying entries in Deutsche Bank’s internal financial records and systems.

Mr Donaldson, now living in New Zealand, pleaded guilty to one charge of using his position dishonestly with the intention of directly or indirectly gaining an advantage for himself.

The sentence was fully suspended and Mr Donaldson was released on his own recognisance with a condition to be of good behaviour for 2 years and a security sum of $10,000.

‘Dishonest use of position in the financial services industry, in order to gain a personal advantage, threatens the integrity of our financial markets. ASIC will continue to take regulatory action to address this type of misconduct,’ ASIC Commissioner Cathie Armour said.

Between 25 July 2013 to 25 June 2014, while working as a FX, options and futures trader with Deutsche Bank in Sydney, Mr Donaldson made a total of 85 false entries into Deutsche Bank’s internal records. By making these entries, Mr Donaldson was falsely representing to Deutsche Bank that he had made substantial profits of more than $31 million (AUD) from his trading in financial products, including US Treasury Note Futures.

As detailed in the agreed facts on sentence, the direct or indirect advantage that Mr Donaldson sought to gain by recording these false transactions was to falsely increase his recorded profit, and to mask his actual trading losses. He was then potentially able to meet his annual revenue budget, be eligible for larger incentive payments, and promote himself to a prospective employer.

As the entries related to trades that were fictitious and never executed in the market, no external parties were affected.

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions prosecuted this matter.

[georgeshutcheson]

Offsetting Business Losses

New Post has been published on https://www.fastaccountant.co.uk/offsetting-business-losses/

Offsetting Business Losses

Whether you’re a Sole Trader, Business Partner, or Limited Company, this article breaks down the Options for Offsetting Business Losses and provides practical advice to help you navigate the complexities of tax law in this area. From general loss relief and offsetting against other income to special situations and considerations for Cash Accounting Basis, this comprehensive guide offers valuable insights to make informed financial decisions. Don’t let business losses hold you back — explore the options and find the best solution for your unique circumstances.

General Loss Relief

If your business experiences a loss, there are several options available for offsetting that loss. As a Sole Trader or Business Partner, you can choose to offset the loss against other income in the same year, against other income in the previous tax year, or carry it forward against the same business indefinitely. These options provide flexibility depending on your individual circumstances.

For example, if you have a part-time job in addition to your business, you can offset the loss against your job income in the same year. Alternatively, if this is your first tax year in business and you left a job part way through the year, you can offset the loss against your job income in the previous tax year. If you choose to carry the loss forward, you can offset it against future profits of your business. It’s important to note that if you choose to offset the loss against other income, tax law requires you to offset the entire loss up to your total income.

There are some restrictions for offsetting losses against other income. If you spend less than 10 hours a week on your business, the maximum offset is £25,000. In all other cases, the maximum offset is £50,000. It’s essential to consider these limits when deciding how to offset your losses.

Example: Let’s say your business makes a loss in the tax year 2023-24. You have the option to offset the loss to other income in the tax year 2024-25 or to other income, including your business’s profits, in the tax year 2022-23. This is possible as long as you are not using the Cash Accounting Scheme. Alternatively, you can carry the loss forward to offset it against profits from the same business in the tax year 2024-25 or any subsequent years.

When considering offsetting losses against current or previous year’s income, it’s important to be mindful of your Personal Allowance. Make sure that offsetting the losses doesn’t bring your taxable income below your Personal Allowance, especially if you anticipate making profits in the future. Wasting your Personal Allowance this year or last year could result in paying more tax in future years.

Planning ahead is crucial when it comes to offsetting losses. If you expect your business profits to increase significantly next year, pushing you into a higher tax bracket, it may be more advantageous to carry the loss forward and offset it against future higher-rate profits. Careful consideration of your individual circumstances and future projections is needed to make an informed decision.

Special Situations

There are specific situations where the rules for offsetting losses differ.

During the first four years of running your business, you have the option to go back three years, starting with the earliest year, and offset the losses against your total income. This is known as offsetting losses in the early years of a trade. This provision allows you to utilize losses from the earliest years of your business to reduce your overall taxable income.

If you decide to close your business, you can carry back losses up to three years. This means you can offset the losses against the income you earned in those previous tax years, providing some relief in the year of closure.

In some circumstances, a business loss can be offset against a capital gain made in the same tax year. This can be beneficial if you have other investments or assets that result in capital gains. Offsetting losses against capital gains can help to reduce your overall tax liability for the year.

Cash Accounting Basis

If you operate your business on a cash accounting basis, there are specific rules regarding offsetting losses. Businesses using the Cash Accounting Basis can only carry losses forward; offsetting sideways or carrying back is not allowed. However, it’s important to note that there is a potential trap for businesses operating on a cash basis.

Many small businesses, operate on a cash basis, meaning they receive income and pay expenses in real-time, rather than through accruals. These businesses do not benefit from the Cash Accounting Scheme as their transactions are already recorded on a cash basis. In this case, it may be advantageous to not select the “Cash Accounting” box on the Self-Assessment form. While this doesn’t change the Self-Assessment itself, it provides more flexibility when dealing with losses.

To understand the difference between Cash Accounting and Accruals Accounting, it’s important to note that Cash Accounting records transactions based on actual cash inflows and outflows, while Accruals Accounting records transactions based on revenue earned and costs incurred, regardless of when the cash is exchanged.

Limited Companies

If you operate your business as a limited company, the rules for offsetting losses are slightly different. As a limited company, you can carry losses forward to offset them against future profits. This allows you to utilize the losses from previous years to reduce your overall tax liability in profitable years.

Additionally, if your limited company was profitable in the previous tax year, you can carry the losses back one year and offset them against the profits you made in that previous year. This can provide immediate relief by reducing your corporation tax liability for the year in which the losses occurred.

If your limited company ceases to trade, you have the option to carry losses back three years. This means you can offset the losses against the profits of the company in the three years preceding the year in which the business ceased trading. This can be beneficial for winding down a business and mitigating tax liabilities.

It’s essential to note that these offsets apply to the profits of the limited company for corporation tax purposes and not against the personal income of the director or shareholder. Consultation with a tax advisor is recommended to fully understand the implications and options available for offsetting losses as a limited company.

In conclusion, understanding the options and rules for offsetting losses is crucial for managing the financial impact of business losses. Whether you are a sole trader, business partner, or operate as a limited company, there are various strategies available to utilize losses and mitigate tax liabilities. By considering factors such as personal allowances, future profits, tax rates, and the specific circumstances of your business, you can make informed decisions to offset losses effectively. Seeking professional advice from a qualified tax advisor can provide further guidance tailored to your individual needs.

[junesfool]

mamaaaa,,, lesbians on strawpage (idk what they put in that brush but I love it)

[violent138]

HC that Crime Lord Red Hood routinely donates medical equipment, money, and well-trained black market medics (formerly employed by gang leaders he took down) to Leslie's clinic. He's also obsessive about updating or improving the generators at the clinic and wears her down in a way that Batman couldn't.

[r0bzombixx]

i wanna sleep in your car while youre driving,

lay in your lap while im crying

[autobotmedic]

[ this is the part where i hit everyone with my own personal childhood nostalgia and i say that if ratch lost everything/finally did reach breaking point

he would just be vict.or fries from btas/bat.man: subzero with his own priorities only

[bedabug]

nancy pelosi's legacy will be her staunch refusal to let any young dems into leadership positions preventing young dems from getting enough experience to be capable of running for higher office

this is why we have a complete void of dems between the ages of 40-60 who are ready and able to run for higher offices, because for 20 something years she prevented anyone younger than her from ascending to a higher standing

name a dem between the ages of 40-60 who has a high enough national profile to run for president other than mayor pete. there's like 4 i can think of immediately and thats as someone who is much more tuned into politics than your average person

there's a lot of reasons to loathe pelosi but i think the lasting damage this will have on the party is being overlooked right now

[fungi-rat]

art dump

Jax

art trade with my irl friend

ranboo from generation loss (my brother was forcing me to watch it)

slimesicle from generation loss

rambley racoon (indigo park)

among us

I’m working on a good post soon

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Goldman Sachs's "tax-loss harvesting" lets the ultra-rich rake in billions tax-free

Tomorrow (Apr 25) I’ll be in San Diego for the launch of my new novel, Red Team Blues, at 7PM at Mysterious Galaxy Books, hosted by Sarah Gailey. Please come and say hi!

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With the IRS Files, Propublica ripped away the veil of performative complexity disguising the scams that the ultra-rich use to amass billions and billions (and billions and billions) of dollars, paying next to no tax, or even no tax at all. Each scam is its own little shell game, a set of semantic and accounting tricks used to gussy up otherwise banal rip-offs.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

The finance sector has a cute name for this kind of complexity: MEGO, which stands for "my eyes glaze over." If you're trying to rip off a mark, you just pad out the prospectus, make it so thick they decide there must be something good in there, the same way that any pile of shit that's sufficiently large must have a pony under it...somewhere.

Propublica's writers haven't merely confirmed just how little America's oligarchs pay in tax - they've also de-MEGO-ized each of these scams, like the way that Peter Thiel used the Roth IRA - a tax-shelter for middle-class earners to help save a few thousand dollars for retirement - to make $5 billion without paying one cent in tax:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/26/wax-rothful/#thiels-gambit

One of my favorite IRS Files reports described how Steve Ballmer - the billionaire ex-CEO of Microsoft - laundered vast fortunes into a state of tax-free grace by creating hundreds of millions in "losses" from his basketball team, the LA Clippers. Ballmer paid 12% tax on the $656 million he took out of the Clippers - while the players whose labor generated that fortune paid 30-40% on their earnings:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

That was Propublica's first Ballmer story, back in the summer of 2021. But they ran a followup last February that I missed (it came out while I was on a book tour in Australia), and it's wild: a tale of "loss harvesting," a form of fuckery involving Goldman Sachs that's depraved even by their own standards:

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-files-taxes-wash-sales-goldman-sachs

Loss farming is a scam that was invented in the 1920s, whereupon it was promptly banned by Congress. But Goldman and other plutocrat Renfields have come up with tiny modern variations on this century-old con that the IRS is either unable or unwilling to address.

Here's how it works. Say you've got a stock portfolio where some of the stocks have gone up and others have gone down. You want to sell the high stocks and hang onto the low ones until they bounce back. But if you sell those stocks that have gone up, you have to "realize" the profit from them and pay 20% capital gains tax on them (capital gains tax is the tax you pay on money you get from owning things; it's much lower than income tax - the tax you pay for doing things).

But you pay tax on your net capital gains - the profits you've made minus the losses you've suffered. What if you sold those loser stocks at the same time? If you made a million on the good stocks and lost a million on the bad ones, your net income is zero - and so is your tax bill.

The problem is that selling stocks when they've gone down is a surefire way to go broke. Every investing book starts with this advice: you will be tempted to hold onto your stocks that are going up, because they might continue to go up. You'll be tempted to sell your stocks that are going down, because they may continue to go down. But if you do that, you'll only sell the stocks that have lost money, and never sell the stocks that have made money, and so you will lose everything.

Back when the pandemic started, your shares in movie theater chains were in the toilet, while your stock in tech companies shot through the roof. If you sold the tech stocks then and held onto your movie stocks and sold them now, you'd have cleaned up - today, tech stocks are down and movie theater stocks are up. But if you sold the cinema shares when they bottomed out, and held onto your tech stocks when they were peaking, you'd be busted today.

So selling your loser stocks to offset the gains from your winners is a bad idea. That's where loss-farming comes in: what if you sold your tech stocks at their peak, and sold your bottomed-out cinema stocks at the same time, but then bought the cinema stocks again, right away? That way you'd have the "loss" from selling the cinema stocks, but you'd still have the stocks.

That's called "wash trading," and Congress promptly banned it. If you've heard of wash-trading, it's probably something you picked up during the NFT bubble, which was a cesspit of illegal wash-trading. Remember all those eye-popping NFT sales? It was just grifters with multiple wallets, buying NFTs from themselves, making it seem like there was this huge, white-hot market for monkey JPEGs. Wash-trading.

Turns out that crypto really did democratize finance...fraud.

Wash-trading has been illegal for a century, but brokerages have invented modern variations on the theme that are legal-ish, and the most lucrative versions of these scams are only available to billionaires, through companies like Goldman Sachs.

There are a bunch of these variations, but they all boil down to this: there are lots of ways to sell an asset and buy it again, while making it look like you bought a different asset. Like, say you're invested in Chinese tech companies through an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that bundles together "all the Top Chinese tech stocks."

Maybe you bought this fund through Vanguard, the giant brokerage. Now, say Chinese stocks are way down, because the Chinese government is doing these waves of lockdowns on the factory cities. If you could sell those Chinese stocks now, you'd get a massive loss, enough to wipe out all the profits from all your good stocks.

But of course, China's going to figure out the lockdown situation eventually, so you don't want to actually get rid of those stocks right now, especially since they're worth so much less than you paid for them. So right after you sell your Vanguard Chinese tech ETF shares, you buy the same amount of Schwab's Chinese tech-stock ETF.

An ETF of "leading Chinese tech companies" is going to have basically the same companies' stock in it, no matter whether it's sold by Vanguard, State Street or Schwab. But as far as the IRS is concerned, this isn't a wash-trade, because you sold a thing called "Vanguard ETF" and bought a thing called "Schwab ETF" and these are different things (even if the main difference is the name on the wrapper, and not what's inside).

There's other ways to do this. For example, lots of companies have different "classes" of stock. Under Armour sells both Class A (voting) and Class C (nonvoting) stocks. Though voting stock is worth a little more than nonvoting stock, they both rise and fall together - if the Class A shares are up 10%, so are the Class C shares. So you can dump your Under Armour Class A's, buy Under Armour Class C's and own essentially the same amount of Under Armour stock - but as far as the IRS is concerned, you just sold your interest in one company and bought an interest in a different company, and you can take a big loss and write down your profits from other stock trades.

The IRS does prohibit wash-trading, but only in the narrowest sense. Brokerages are obliged to report trades in which a customer buys and sells exactly the same security, with the same unique ID (the CUSIP number), within 60 days. Beyond that, IRS guidance is extraordinarily wishy-washy, calling on filers to "consider all the facts and circumstances" of their transactions. Sure, that'll work.

Propublica found zero instances of the IRS targeting any of these trades, ever, for enforcement. That's especially true of the most egregious version of loss-harvesting, a special version that only the ultra-rich can take advantage of, called "direct indexing." You might know about "index funds," where a brokerage sells a single fund that tracks a broad index of stocks - for example, you can buy an S&P 500 index that goes up and down with the total value of the top 500 stocks in America.

Direct indexing is something that giant banks like Goldman Sachs offer to their very richest clients. The brokerage buys a mix of stocks that are likely to track the whole index, and puts those shares directly into the client's account. Rather than owning shares in a fund that owns the stocks, you own the stocks directly. That means that when you want to harvest some losses, you can sell just a few of the stocks in the index, rather than your shares in the whole fund.

Here's how that works. In 2017, the US index was up 20%; global indexes were up even more. Steve Ballmer made a bundle. But Goldman Sachs, acting on Ballmer's behalf, sold s few of the stocks in the portfolio and harvested a $100,000,000 loss, that Ballmer could use to trick the IRS into treating his massive profits as though he'd made very little taxable income.

Goldman uses a whole range of tricks to keep billionaires like Ballmer in a lower tax-bracket than the janitors who clean the floors after his team's games. They not only buy and sell different classes of stock in companies like Discovery and Fox; they also buy and sell the same company's stock in different countries. For example, they sold Ballmer's shares in Shell in one country, and then immediately bought the same amount of shares in another country. The IRS doesn't treat this as a wash-trade, despite the fact that the shares have the same value, and, indeed, companies like Shell routinely merge their overseas and domestic shares with no change in valuation.

Thanks to Goldman's ruses - and the IRS's willingness to accept them - Ballmer's wealth has swollen to grotesque proportions. He generated $579 million in losses from 2014-18, and as a result, got to keep at least $138m that he'd have otherwise had to pay to the IRS.

Goldman's not the only one in on this game: Iconiq Captial - a firm that also offers marriage partner scouting for its richest clients - has $13.2 billion under management on behalf of just 337 people. Among those high-rollers: Mark Zuckerberg, whose $88m in gains from Iconiq investments were offset by $34m in imaginary losses that the company manufactured with wash-trades.

In theory, the simplest form of wash-trading - selling your Vanguard China fund and buying a Schwab China fund - is available to any investor. Leaving aside the fact that the top 1% of Americans own most of the stock, this is still a deceptive proposition. This kind of wash-trading only benefits investors who hold their shares outside of a sheltered retirement account, which is a vanishing minority indeed.

Instead, the primary beneficiaries of this activity are the usual suspects: convicted monopolists like Ballmer, or useless scions of wealthy families, like the kids of Walmart founder Sam Walton, who emerged into this world through very lucky orifices and are thus effectively exempt from the need to work or pay tax for life.

Jim Walton is Sam Walton's youngest orifice-lottery-winner. Young Jim saw a $10 billion increase in his wealth from 2014-18, making him the tenth richest person in America. Thanks to wash-trading, he declared only $111 million of that $10 billion on his taxes, and paid $0.00 in tax on that $10 billion gains.

One way that the rich are especially well-situated to exploit loss-harvesting is in converting short-term gains - which are taxed at 40% - into long-term gains, which are taxed at 20%. For people who make a lot of money buying and selling shares as pure speculation, flipping them in less than a year, wash-trading can create the appearance of long-term holdings. Analyzing their trove of leaked IRS files, Propublica showed that Americans who report over $10 million in income almost never report short-term gains. Instead, two-thirds of the richest Americans report short-term losses.

One fascinating wrinkle is that rich people may not even know this is going on. Whatsapp co-founder Brian Acton, managed to "lose" $2.9 million  when he sold $17 million in shares - the same day he bought $17 million in shares in nearly the same companies from another brokerage. Then, a few months later, he reversed those transactions, selling his new fund and buying the old one and harvesting another $600,000 in losses.

When Propublica asked Acton about this, he told them he was "not really aware of any events like that...Broadly my wealth is managed by a wealth management firm and they manage all the day to day transactions."

This is completely believable and consistent with the extraordinarily frank account of how elite money-management works that Abigail Disney described in 2021, where the ultra-rich are insulated from the scams, tricks and wheezes that lawyers and accountants dream up to keep their fortunes steadily mounting with no action needed on their part:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

Could the IRS block this kind of wash-trading? Yes, but they'd need action from Congress. The most effective way to do this would be to force shareholders to "mark to market" the value of their holdings, taxing them each year on the fluctuations in their portfolio.

Propublica notes that this is incredibly unlikely to happen, though. As an alternative, Congress could change the rule that blocks investors from claiming losses when they buy and sell "substantially identical" shares with a rule that applies to "substantially similar" stocks. This proposal comes from Columbia Law's David Schizer, who says the law "ought to be updated to reflect how people invest today instead of how they invested 100 years ago."

But for any of that to have an effect, the IRS would have to change its auditing and enforcement practices, which currently see low-income earners (who can't afford fancy tax-lawyers who'll tie up the IRS for months or years) being disproportionately targeted, while America's super-rich, ultra-rich, and stupid-rich are allowed to submit the most hilariously, obviously fictional returns and get away with it.

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Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in San Diego, Burbank, Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

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[Image ID: A dilapidated shack. A sign reading 'Internal Revenue Service Building' stands next to it. From its eaves depends another sign, reading 'Internal Revenue Service' and bearing the IRS logo. From the window of the shack beams the grinning face of billionaire Steve Ballmer. Behind the shack is a DC avenue terminating in the Capitol Dome.]

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Image: Matthew Bisanz (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NYC_IRS_office_by_Matthew_Bisanz.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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Ted Eytan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2021.02.07_DC_Street,_Washington,_DC_USA_038_13205-Edit_%2850920473547%29.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

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Bart Everson (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/editor/1287341637

Eric Garcetti (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steve_Ballmer_2014.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[sotvtaughtmehowtofeel]

in the original script, Ezra says "For if we hold that equivalent exchange persists in this space then we must give something of ourselves in order to build something new..." now this line didn't make it into the movie, but I fully interpret this as Ezra loses his arm and Cee loses her father but they both then get to build something new (ie their bond, their new life together)

you cannot convince me the writers didn't do this intentionally

[elitheaceofalltrades]

Here to Hear - Poem

I lay in the abyss,

Drowning

Weighed down by

The grief

The grief

The grief

I cry out.

I am calling your name,

You are no longer here to hear it.

[puckpocketed]

re; zegras trade rumours for all you girlies panicking (and because i have no time to do my usual write-ups)

reading the room on the guy who floated the idea: he should not be taken seriously, and is not being taken seriously by most on twitter

ducks-wise: the drysdale trade for gauthier was explicitly explained as an effort to bolster scoring. zegras is top 2 playmaker along with carlsson, and has made considerable strides in his efforts off the puck post-benching.

he’s shown that he is willing to change and is following through with it (imo why his stats have looked a little lopsided, besides injury), but the rest of the team — and i’m sorry to say this if you love them but i mean it with respect — do not have it in them to finish on the chances he gives them.

what verbeek was cooking with this trade:

1) let go of some of the defensemen surplus that the ducks have (lot of good prospects upcoming, and minty is on fire rn)

2) get a guy who has a lethal shot so the ducks playmakers can actually do something

tl;dr the drysdale-gauthier trade was 100% for zegras to have a guy to pass the puck to, and zegras is solidifying himself as a coachable player with some depth. no reason to trade him — unless it’s for something really fucking huge.

[allaboutforexworld]

Trend Following: Forex Trading Strategy Explained

Trend following is a trading strategy that aims to capitalize on the upward or downward trends in the market. By identifying and following these trends, traders can potentially increase their profits while minimizing risks. This strategy is grounded in the belief that prices move in trends and that these trends persist over time. Understanding the Basics What is Trend Following? It is a strategy…

[gawayne]

unreasonably upset about the fact that there are art forms I want to practice, that I know how to do, that the school has the extremely expensive equipment for, that I cannot use because an engineering professor can’t give me directed studies work in the book arts lab

[titobeauvi]

how much y'all wanna bet barz and tito are facetiming right this second?