Capital Losses

Unfortunately this year there are not alot of folks with capital gains- most of us have capital losses.

It would be valuable to sit down with your advisor or CPA to see what losses you could take this year to help offset income. You can take a max. loss of $3,000 per year and deduct from your income on the front page of your 1040. If you have losses more than $3,000, you can carry them forward to future tax years.

** Keep in mind this applies to non-qualified accounts, not Retirement ( qualified accouts like your 401(k)'s, Roth's or IRA's)
Another thing to remember is that even though your mutual fund may have lost 30% YTD, your mutual fund may still be passing on capital gains from stocks they were forced to sell this year in the fund that still had a gain. Yes, that can really suck if you are getting passed a capital gain when you might not have owned the fund when they bought the stock that they are now selling at the capital gain. So you could accomplish 2 things, sell a fund at a loss to write off on your taxes and if you time it correctly, you can not own the fund when the capital gain is distributed in December.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if you still want to keep the investment, which is usually the case, you have to wait 30 days( wash rule) before you can buy the asset back again.