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Accounting for 2024, always 10% off

 

For my tax declaration I always run a flex-query to get a file over all transactions of the year. The report gives me among many other things a column called CapitalGainsPnl.
This should be how much I made on each trade, right?
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However if I sum this column and compare the total with the difference I see in the account management when I take the balance on 1st January and 31st December the result is off by about 10%.
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Is there an easy explanation for this?
 

Perhaps this is due to an automated 10% withholding tax that IB automatically deducts (for example, if you are not a US citizen)
 

Hmm I'm not US citizen. I'm in Europe and with IB Ireland. I sent in this form to avoid double taxation but that maybe has nothing to do with it (I'm awful with all this tax things)?
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However the value I get from summing up the trades from the flex-query is 10% less than what I see on my account. Would it be this way round?
 

What about the transaction fees ?
They may have been substracted or not from the amount you got.
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1.) I think they are subtracted.
2.) They are luckily not 10%.
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Has anybody a link to where all the fields of the flex query are explained in detail? I searched but couldn't find this info.
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There are for example two fields CapitalGainsPnl and FifoPnlRealized. What is the exact difference? And there are many questions like this.
 

I am not a tax expert either and use FlexQueries only infrequently (so I am not very well qualified for an answer, but ...)

Depending on what instrument you trade, at least here in the US, trade gains can get taxed as "Capital Gains", "Ordinary Income" or a combination. Tax rates differ for the various scenarios where capital gains rates are usually lower than ordinary income rates. Also, "long term capital gains" rates (when held for more than a year) are lower than "short term capital gains".

FifoPnlRealized comes into play when you have a position that you hold for a long time and you buy and sell at very different prices over time. Say you sell a portion of this position now, P&L an be calculated as:
  • current proceeds of sales minus cost of the earliest buy trades in the position (FirstInFirstOut)
  • current proceeds of sales minus cost of the mot recent buy trades in the position (LastInFirstOut)

P&L can obviously be very different in both cases even to a point where one would show a profit while the other shows a loss. On the other side, if you always close out the entire position, both methods of determining P&L would calculate identical values.

When you create your FlexQuery, which of the sections do the CapitalGainsPnl and FifoPnlRealized fields come from?

闯ü谤驳别苍

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On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 12:04 PM, Despair wrote:

1.) I think they are subtracted.
2.) They are luckily not 10%.
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Has anybody a link to where all the fields of the flex query are explained in detail? I searched but couldn't find this info.
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There are for example two fields CapitalGainsPnl and FifoPnlRealized. What is the exact difference? And there are many questions like this.
 

Thank you 闯ü谤驳别苍. You always come with great information.
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My flex-query just takes information from the "Trades" section. There it doesn't differentiate between CapitalGainsPnl and FifoPnlRealized. I just crossed "Realized PnL" and both columns pop up in the CSV.
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I understand that ?CapitalGainsPnl somehow is influenced by taxes although I'm unsure how this effects me living in Sweden having my account at IB Ireland and being granted an exemption from Irish withholding tax (it says so in my account management).
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Would be perfect if there was a field for the raw realized PnL before any tax considerations.
 

FifoPnlRealized reports the value of trades realized as partially or fully closed positions during the reporting period, taking into account respective expenses in FIFO order. I believe it is net of any commissions paid, if memory serves me well. It also does not differentiate between long and short term P&L, so it may not necessarily be useful for computing taxable income if such difference has tax implications. It is generally more of a raw finalized performance indicator rather than a tax reporting one, although it can be used for taxes if the tax code allows.
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You will find IBKR reporting references at
(1) https://www.ibkrguides.com/clientportal/performanceandstatements/reports.htm
(2) https://www.ibkrguides.com/reportingreference/reportguide/reportreference.htm
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However they leave quite a bit to be desired in detail, eloquence and structure.
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The issue of tax is complex and depends on your tax residence, the domicile of the business you are trading, the type of proceeds, and IB tax status in your country of residence.
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Generally speaking, your IB account is very unlikely to be charged any capital gains tax whatsoever unless IB is a tax agent in your country of residence and your country charges such a tax, i.e. if it is obligated to pay taxes for you to the tax authorities in the country of your tax residence where you physically conduct any trading activity including remote trading on overseas markets. And even then I would expect the tax to be reported separately from any investment proceeds proper, similarly to how dividends and dividend taxes withheld are treated.
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