The Taxing Truth: A Two Million Dollar Odyssey

At the peak of my adventures with the stock market, I was averaging over thirty trades a day. I had the trading platform installed on every device I owned or used—my phone, laptops, even workstations. I was constantly glued to the screen. With my active trader status, transaction settlements were instant, allowing me to rotate the same money through multiple transactions daily. This gave me a significant advantage over non-active traders and facilitated my high trading volume.

At the end of the financial year, I went to my tax consultant to file my taxes. He asked for a printout of all my stock transactions for the year. When I arrived with the documents, he was taken aback by the sheer volume of paper.

“Is this a book you’re carrying?” he asked.

“No, it’s the printout of my stock transactions for the year!” I replied.

“Are you serious? It looks like an encyclopedia!” he exclaimed.

He took the bundle and my W2, then started inputting numbers into his tax software. After a few minutes, he paused, shook his head, and began re-entering the data.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing. I think I missed a zero somewhere and messed up the calculation, so I’m redoing it,” he replied.

When he finished the recalculations, he stared at the screen in disbelief.

“What happened now?” I asked.

“I don’t know, man. Is this for real?” he asked, showing me the monitor.

The calculation revealed I had done two million dollars worth of transactions that year! We were both stunned. For him, it was unbelievable that my salary could support such trading volume, and for me, it was shocking to realize how much I had traded.

“When was I doing my office work?” I wondered.

It wouldn’t have been surprising if this figure came from a wealthy person’s trading, but from an average joe like me, it was unexpected.

“Every year, you come here with tens of thousands of dollars in losses, and now you’ve done millions in transactions but still haven’t made any money. What’s the point? Your wife must keep you in check!” he said, breaking the silence.

I had no answer to that. We finished my tax filing, and I headed home with a promise to him that I would end my stock market adventures.