Friday, March 16, 2007

Oops! I have a long term capital loss

I just figured out that one of the scrips I hold is in the red and I have crossed one year period of holding it. The scrip over the year had only reached a modest 10% gain which was quickly wiped out by the recent market downturn and add to that we just celebrated one year of ownership! So I was contemplating selling it off and to my dismay I found that I cannot write the loss off against any other gain.

The way I see it, short term losses can be written off against short term gains but long term losses cannot be set off against long term gains since they are not taxable anyway! So it seems I need to just sell it and swallow my loss (and pride :-) )

2 comments:

Vinayaka C A said...

Hi,
I have the same problem.
I wish we could set-off LTCL with STCG :)

Vinayaka CA

Naiyer Jawaid said...

This problem will always be there with a few stock in the portfolio. All the stock can't perform in the longterm also.