@mukundaa asked:
One of the major benefits of Trader Tax Status is that you can deduct business expenses. For a trader, this can include internet service, margin interest, software, and trading information services, among many other things too. For me, I wrote off the cost of OptionNetExplorer, OptionVue, and services such as SteadyOptions. In the beginning years, I went from trading service to trading service (subscribing to several at once), the large expense of the Sheridan Mentoring program, lots and lots of different software. It was very beneficial to get the 28% tax back. As time progressed, I stopped using many of these services, and my expenses dropped considerably, so the benefit (getting back ~28% of the cost) didn't outweigh the cost (the remaining 72% out of my pocket). It just was no longer worth the extra hassle of filing out business taxes. Everyone's situation will be different.
Commissions are not tax deductible, but they are priced in to your PnL, so effectively it is tax deductible. If you had a gain of $100, and your commissions were $20, you'd only show $80 as your net gain, and only pay taxes on $80. If you had a $100 loss, and also paid $20 in taxes, then you get to subtract $120 from other gains.
For taxes, more specifically, for trade accounting, I really like TradeLog. It's not cheap, and is an annual subscription, but in my opinion, it's worth it as it's accurate, matches trades very well, and is pretty easy to use.
Once done with TradeLog, I use TurboTax to complete my personal taxes (and previously used TurboTax Business for the LLC).