Do not need carryover capital loss this year can I save for next year?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
June 6, 2019
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Best answer by MargaretL

No, you cannot pick and choose which year the carryover loss will apply; the IRS does not allow it, unfortunately. You must use whatever capital loss carryover is available to you and apply to the current year, the unused amount is then carried to future years. If you skip a year, you permanently forfeit the carryover.

MargaretLAnswer

Employee

dmnttax

Thanks for answering that question on Capital loss carry over. I can see that you can not if you are filing this year and want to skip. Now, what if I am not required to file tax because I only had $5000 capital gain and no other income, so I am below threshold to be required to file? The point is if I file, then my carryover is reduced by $5000, and I have no benefit from this since my income is still -3000 and I wasted $5000 of my carryover this year to offset something I didn't have to report! My question is under the above circumstances, can I opt and not file taxes and use the full carryover to next year instead of 'carryover-$5000' that will result (for the next year carryover) if I did it this year?

jbbafl

Even though you don't think you need to file taxes with the IRS because you do not meet the requirement in terms of income, you still need to file in order to maintain your carryover privileges. That means, for example, if you have an income of only $7,000 and you have losses or gains, and your income still remains under the requirement for filing taxes, you still have to file...to report your gains and/or losses. If you skip a year, the IRS, as policy, will not let you carryover losses. You are always required to file taxes if you have any sort of income/gain or loss as long as it is being reported to the IRS by another entity. Entities such as a brokerage firms and money management firms, for example, will report your gains or losses to the IRS. So, the reason for filing taxes is twofold, 1. to maintain your carryover privileges in case you need to use them, and 2. It is required by law. Typically, the IRS may not care much if you only have losses, but they may take notice if you have gains that exceed your filing threshold and you don't report them. Hope this helps.

ssssruch

I have a capital loss on my rental property that carries over to this year. last year i did not claim any days of personal use. This year if i claimed i used it for 15 days or more how does that impact me. Do i still get to carry over the prior years losses and this years losses or do i loose all carry over losses because i used it for 15 plus days of personal use

npierson777

You won't lose your carry over losses. However, you will have to prorate your expenses if you use your rental property for personal use more that 14 days in a year.

You can learn more about that here:

Renting Residential and Vacation Property