Run a tax report
Estimate the tax on a year's gains and dividends, US or Canada, and export the details to Excel.
The Tax page estimates the tax on your trading for one year or quarter: capital gains and losses, dividends, and the tax they add on top of your other income. It's a planning tool, not a filing: use it to see where you stand and to hand your accountant the details.
Before you start
The report is only as good as the data behind it. Take five minutes for these first:
- Set each account's type. The type decides whether an account counts as taxable. On Accounts & Data, open each account's ⋮ menu, choose Edit Account and pick the right Account Type (for example TFSA, RRSP, Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, or Cash (Non-Registered) for a regular account). See Find and fix data issues.
- Clear the data issues for the year: missing purchases, options past expiration with no recorded outcome. Turn on Show Issues in the Trade Log and work through Find and fix data issues.
- Group unmerged trades. Trades you unmerged and left ungrouped are not counted. See Merge, move and unmerge trades.
Run the report
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Open Tax. You see the Tax Report Parameters form.
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Pick the Tax Year.
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Pick the Period: Full Year, or one quarter (Q1 (Jan-Mar) to Q4 (Oct-Dec)) for a quarterly estimate.
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Pick the Country: United States or Canada. The report follows that country's rules and currency (USD or CAD).
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Check the Accounting Method. It switches with the country: ACB (Average Cost Basis) for Canada, FIFO (First In, First Out) for the US. Keep the default unless you know you need the other.
Term Meaning ACB Adjusted cost base: the average cost of all the shares you hold, used by the CRA. FIFO First in, first out: the shares you bought first are the ones you sell first. -
Enter your Expected Base Income (before investment income): salary, wages and other income that isn't from investing. The report uses it to find your tax bracket. Leave
0to see the investment tax on its own. -
Open Accounts and tick the accounts to include. Taxable accounts are ticked to start with; accounts that are tax-exempt in the report's country (TFSA, RRSP for Canada; IRA, 401(k) for the US) show "(tax-exempt)" and are left out, but you can add them. The line below shows the mix, for example "2 taxable, 0 tax-exempt selected". You need at least one.
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Canada only: set the Capital Gains Inclusion Rate, the share of a capital gain that is taxed. The switch is at 50% by default; flip it to 100% only if that applies to you.
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Optional: drop your broker's tax documents (PDF or CSV, such as a gains and losses statement, a 1099-B or a T5008) on Upload Broker Files to Cross Reference with myTraderDash. Each file shows whether it was recognized and, under it, the Account it covers. Check it, or tick the right one where it says Pick its account… (a T5008 can cover several accounts). Each file is compared with its own accounts only; the comparison with your broker's numbers is in the Excel export.
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Click Calculate Tax Estimate. After a moment the Tax Results page opens.
Your choices are saved in the page address. Bookmark it to run the same report again later with one click on Calculate Tax Estimate.
Read the results
| Section | What it shows |
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| Tax Estimate Summary | Year, period and country, the currency, your base income, the number of accounts and (Canada) the inclusion rate. The Export button is here. |
| Investment Breakdown | Two charts: your investment income by type, and the tax by category. |
| Income Breakdown | Base income, dividends, gains, losses and net gains. US reports split short-term from long-term. |
| Tax Breakdown | The tax on each kind of income, Total Estimated Tax, Effective Tax Rate, and the Investment Tax Summary: the tax your investing adds. |
| Tax Brackets Applied | The brackets and rates the estimate used. |
| How This Was Calculated | Short explanations: gains and losses, wash sales (US) or superficial losses (Canada), loss offsetting, and simplifying assumptions. |
What the estimate leaves out: state and provincial tax, deductions, credits, AMT, NIIT and loss carryforwards from earlier years. Wash sales and superficial losses are matched on the same security only. Check the result with a tax professional before you file.
How the tax report calculates explains the rules in detail.
Export to Excel
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On the Tax Results page, click Export in the Tax Estimate Summary.
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An Excel file downloads. Its sheets:
Sheet Contents Income Breakdown, Tax Breakdown The numbers on screen; income per account when you picked several. Tax Lots Every sale: account, close date, quantity, cost, proceeds, gain or loss, days held. Dividends Every dividend in the period. Per-Ticker Stats Totals per ticker. Wash Sales or Superficial Losses Losses that were disallowed, when there are any. Transfer Audit Shares moved between accounts and the cost carried with them. Unresolvable Groups Positions the report couldn't work out, with reason and action. Notes & Flags Things to review, each with an action. Commissions Fees per account and ticker, for information. Broker Comparison Your broker's numbers next to the app's, when you uploaded files. Sheets with nothing to show are left out.
Kept for 24 hours. The report is kept for 24 hours after you calculate it: you can reload the results page, open its link in a new tab and export until then. After that, the results page says "This report has expired" and Export says "Report expired"; go back to Tax and click Calculate Tax Estimate again.
Commissions are already inside every gain and loss (added to the cost of each purchase, taken off each sale's proceeds). The Commissions sheet is for information only: don't deduct them a second time.