Tax season shouldn't be the first time you see your own numbers.
Your broker's 1099-B tells you what happened. It doesn't sort short-term from long-term in a way you can actually read, and it never explains itself.
By April, most of it is guesswork rebuilt from memory.
This is one workbook. Every closed position gets a row: symbol, dates, proceeds, cost basis. Gain or loss, days held, and short-term or long-term status calculate themselves the moment you enter the numbers.
There's a wash sale adjustment column too. It stays at zero until you or your preparer decide one applies. This workbook doesn't guess at that rule. It gives the number a place to live once you know it.
Log it as you close each position, and April stops being an archaeology project.
Nothing here files anything. It doesn't talk to your broker. It's a spreadsheet, not a service.
Bring the totals to whoever does your taxes. That's the job it has.
A Trading Habits Tool
The Trade Tax Log
A year-round record of proceeds, cost basis, and holding periods.
- Format Excel workbook (.xlsx), opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers
- Tabs Trade Log, Summary, Instructions
- Fields Dates, symbol, proceeds, cost basis, wash sale adjustment, gain/loss, holding period
- Delivery Instant download right after checkout
Built to sit next to your 1099-B, not replace it.
What's Inside
What's Inside The Trade Tax Log
- 01A 200-row trade log with columns for date acquired, date sold, symbol, description, quantity, proceeds, and cost basis.
- 02Gain or loss calculates itself the moment you enter proceeds and cost basis. No manual subtraction, no calculator open in another tab.
- 03Holding period marks itself Short-Term or Long-Term based on the actual number of days between your two dates.
- 04A dedicated wash sale adjustment column, left at zero until you or your preparer determine one applies. Nothing here detects wash sales automatically.
- 05A Summary tab totaling short-term gain/loss, long-term gain/loss, and wash sale adjustments across every row you've logged.
- 06A full instructions tab covering exactly what the workbook does, and what it doesn't do.
- 07No macros, no plug-ins, no login. Opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers.
- 08A worked example row showing exactly how the math flows before you log a real position.
HABITS
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Behind The Tool
Where Cost Basis, Holding Periods, And The Wash Sale Rule Came From
The Concept
Every closed position produces four numbers a trader eventually has to account for: what it cost, what it sold for, how long it was held, and whether the loss on it is allowed to count this year. Cost basis and proceeds are arithmetic. Subtract one from the other and the gain or loss falls out on its own. Holding period is a calendar question. Count the days between the two dates and the answer decides whether the position gets taxed as short-term or long-term.
The wash sale question is different. It isn't about what happened on this trade. It's about what happened on every other trade in a 61-day window around it, in every account a trader owns, including retirement accounts. That's the piece a spreadsheet can flag a place for but can't determine on its own, since it requires knowing whether a repurchased security counts as "substantially identical," a phrase the tax code has never pinned to a hard rule.
Where It Comes From
The wash sale rule is old. Section 214(a)(5) of the Revenue Act of 1921, later recodified as Internal Revenue Code Section 1091, disallowed a loss deduction when a taxpayer sold a security and bought a substantially identical one within 30 days before or after the sale. Congress wrote it after watching investors sell a losing position purely to claim the deduction, then buy the position right back with no meaningful change in what they held. A Senate report from that era put the goal plainly: preventing "evasion through the medium of wash sales." The 30-day window on each side, 61 days total counting the sale date, has held for more than a century.
Cost basis reporting on a 1099-B is newer. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 required brokers to start tracking and reporting cost basis for covered securities straight to the IRS, phased in starting with stock bought in 2011 and extending through mutual funds, dividend reinvestment shares, and bonds by 2014. Before that law, basis tracking sat almost entirely with the individual investor, whose own records and the broker's numbers didn't always match. The IRS introduced Form 8949 for the 2011 tax year specifically to reconcile the two. That reconciliation, a broker's reported basis against a trader's own log, is the job this workbook is built to make easier.
Try It: Check A Wash Sale Window
Reads the date and does the day math only. It doesn't know which security you bought, whether it counts as substantially identical, or whether the repurchase happened in a different account, since the rule reaches across every account you own, IRAs included. Nothing here is tax advice. Confirm any wash sale determination with a tax professional before you file.
Common Questions
How old is the wash sale rule?
Over a century. Section 214(a)(5) of the Revenue Act of 1921, later recodified as Internal Revenue Code Section 1091, disallowed a loss deduction when a taxpayer sold a security and bought a substantially identical one within 30 days before or after the sale. Congress wrote it after investors were selling losers purely to claim the deduction, then buying the position right back.
When did brokers start reporting cost basis directly to the IRS?
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 required it, phased in starting with stock bought in 2011 and extending through mutual funds, dividend reinvestment shares, and bonds by 2014. Before that law, basis tracking sat almost entirely with the individual investor.
Can a spreadsheet tell you for certain whether a repurchase triggers a wash sale?
No. That determination depends on whether the repurchased security counts as "substantially identical," a phrase the tax code has never pinned to a hard rule, and the rule reaches across every account a trader owns, including retirement accounts. Confirm any wash sale determination with a tax professional before filing.