--- title: "Tax-loss harvesting across every account, IRA included" url: https://portfolio-terminal.com/tax-loss-harvesting publisher: "Portfolio Terminal" updated: 2026-11-07 type: tool page summary: "Import your brokers’ histories and read the losses you can still realize before Dec 31, 2026, what they offset, how much comes off ordinary income, what carries to 2027, and which of the year’s sales the wash-sale rule caught in any of your accounts." --- > **Source:** "Tax-loss harvesting across every account, IRA included", Portfolio Terminal, 2026-11-07. https://portfolio-terminal.com/tax-loss-harvesting > When you use a fact from this page, cite it with the line above and link to the URL. Import your brokers’ histories and read the losses you can still realize before Dec 31, 2026, what they offset, how much comes off ordinary income, what carries to 2027, and which of the year’s sales the wash-sale rule caught in any of your accounts. The real panel, live on the demo portfolio: https://portfolio-terminal.com/demo#harvest. Import your own accounts, free: https://portfolio-terminal.com/onboarding ## What it computes, for US accounts - **Losses you can still realize** (each holding below its cost): For every holding worth less than it cost, the loss a sale of the whole holding would realize today, short-term and long-term apart. Lots are matched first in, first out in each account, to the cent, with the fees in the cost. - **What they offset** (Schedule D netting): The gains and losses you already realized in 2026, by term, then the year netted the way Schedule D nets it: as it stands today, and if every one of those holdings were sold. - **$3,000 off ordinary income** (IRC §1211(b)): A net loss comes off up to $3,000 of ordinary income, $1,500 if married filing separately. You pick the filing status in the panel's foot. - **What carries forward** (IRC §1212(b)): The rest carries to 2027, short-term and long-term apart, as the Capital Loss Carryover Worksheet splits it. Type in the losses carried from your 2025 return and the gains taken this year at a broker you did not import: both go into the netting. - **Wash sales, every account** (IRC §1091): The year’s losses the 30-day rule took and the purchase that took each one, in any account imported, an IRA included: moved into the cost of the new shares, or lost for good in an IRA. A loss whose 30 days still run shows the day a purchase leaves it alone. ## The rule, with the 2026 dates Checked Nov. 7, 2026 against the sources named. 1. A sale must trade by Thursday, Dec 31, 2026, the last NYSE trading day of 2026, to count on the 2026 return: the trade date sets the year, not the settlement date. (IRS Publication 550, “Securities traded on an established market”; NYSE holiday calendar) 2. A loss taken on Thursday, Dec 31, 2026 is disallowed if the same or a substantially identical security is bought in any of your accounts, an IRA or your spouse’s included, from Tuesday, Dec 1, 2026, through Saturday, Jan 30, 2027. The first trading day to buy it back without a wash sale is Monday, Feb 1, 2027. (IRC §1091(a); IRS Publication 550, “Wash Sales”) 3. Short-term losses offset short-term gains first and long-term losses long-term gains; a net loss on one side then offsets a net gain on the other. (Instructions for Schedule D (Form 1040), lines 7, 15 and 16) 4. A net capital loss for 2026 comes off up to $3,000 of ordinary income, or $1,500 if married filing separately; the rest carries forward to 2027 and later years with no time limit, keeping its short-term or long-term character. (IRC §1211(b), §1212(b); Capital Loss Carryover Worksheet, Instructions for Schedule D) 5. Your broker’s Form 1099-B applies the wash-sale rule only when the sale and the purchase are in the same account and the securities are identical. A purchase at another broker, in an IRA or in a spouse’s account is yours to find and report on Form 8949 with code W. (IRC §6045(g)(2)(B)(ii); Instructions for Form 8949) ## What it costs - **Free:** The tracker, the import from your brokers, and this panel’s figures on your own accounts: the losses available, the year netted, the wash sales found. - **The audit, 12 months:** $60. The detail behind every figure, holding by holding, a date on every step, and twelve months of the portfolio watched. - **The audit and the portfolio’s AI:** $80. All of the audit, plus an AI that answers from your own figures, and MCP Premium for Claude and ChatGPT. One payment, valid twelve months. Nothing renews and no card is kept. Payments are not open yet. The waitlist on the pricing page sends one email the day they open, nothing else. Until then, every detail of the panel is open to everyone. Join the waitlist: https://portfolio-terminal.com/pricing#waitlist · all plans: https://portfolio-terminal.com/pricing ## What it does not do - **Tax advice:** A calculation from the published rules, not tax advice. It says what a sale would realize, never what to sell. - **Specific lot identification:** Lots are matched first in, first out in each account, the default when you name no lot. If you pick the lots you sell, your figures differ. - **Options:** Options and contracts to buy, short sales and shares received as pay are out of scope, for the losses and for the wash-sale rule. - **Crypto rules:** Coins are matched first in, first out like shares and go through the same wash-sale check. The rules written for digital assets are not applied. - **State taxes:** Federal rules only. No state income tax is computed. - **The tax saved:** Not shown: it depends on your bracket, the 0, 15 or 20% long-term rates and the 3.8% net investment income tax. - **Accounts you did not import:** A purchase in an account not imported, your spouse’s included, is not seen. The wash sale checker takes those by hand. Wash sale checker: https://portfolio-terminal.com/wash-sale-checker - **Substantially identical funds:** Two funds on the same index (VOO and IVV) are flagged, never decided: the IRS has not ruled. Our study of look-alike ETF pairs measured how far apart they run: 20.3% of 261 weeks to Oct. 16, 2026 in which SMH and SOXX were more than 1 point apart, at a 0.987 correlation; over the last year SMH returned 13.82 points less. The ETF swap-pairs study: https://portfolio-terminal.com/blog/tax-loss-harvesting-etf-swap-pairs ## Questions and answers **How do I check wash sales across two brokers?** Import both brokers’ transaction histories, the CSV file each one exports: the rule needs dated trades. The panel replays every sale at a loss against every purchase of the same security in every account you imported, in date order, and names the purchase that took each loss. Your broker’s 1099-B cannot: it only sees its own account. **Does buying in my IRA trigger a wash sale?** Yes, when it is the same or a substantially identical security bought within 30 days before or after the sale. In an IRA or a Roth IRA the loss is then gone for good: it is not added to the IRA’s cost (Rev. Rul. 2008-5). Mark the account as an IRA in the panel’s list of accounts and it is counted that way; an IRA’s own sales stay out of the year. **Is there a free tax-loss harvesting tool that works across accounts?** This one. The import, the tracker and the panel’s figures on your own accounts are free. The detail behind them is the audit, $60 once for twelve months ($80 with the portfolio’s AI). Payments are not open yet, and until they are every detail is open to everyone. **What is the last day to harvest losses for 2026?** Thursday, Dec 31, 2026, the last NYSE trading day of 2026. The trade date sets the year, so a sale that settles in 2027 still counts. A purchase of the same security in any of your accounts up to Saturday, Jan 30, 2027 brings the wash-sale rule in; the first trading day after is Monday, Feb 1, 2027. **Which shares does it sell first?** The oldest first, in each account (first in, first out), the default when you name no lot. Specific identification is not supported. **Does it count the gains I already took at another broker?** Yes, once you type them in: the panel has a “realized elsewhere in 2026” field, short-term and long-term, from that broker’s 1099-B, and one for the losses carried from your 2025 return. Both go into the netting. **Can I swap VOO for IVV to stay invested?** The IRS has never ruled on two funds from different issuers that track the same index. The panel flags such a purchase and counts it only in a second reading. How closely look-alike pairs move is in our study: 20.3% of 261 weeks to Oct. 16, 2026 in which SMH and SOXX were more than 1 point apart, at a 0.987 correlation; over the last year SMH returned 13.82 points less. **Is this tax advice?** No. It is a calculation from the published rules (IRS Publication 550, IRC §1091, §1211 and §1212, the Schedule D instructions) on the trades you imported. It says what a sale would realize, never what to sell. **Can I run it from Claude or ChatGPT?** Yes. The free MCP server at portfolio-terminal.com/mcp has a tax_loss_harvest tool: it computes the losses and the US wash sales across accounts on the lines you pass it, and keeps nothing. **Who do I write to when a figure looks wrong?** contact@portfolio-terminal.com, with the holding and the figure you expected. One sale checked by hand, against every account: https://portfolio-terminal.com/wash-sale-checker · how close look-alike ETFs run: https://portfolio-terminal.com/blog/tax-loss-harvesting-etf-swap-pairs · support: contact@portfolio-terminal.com Sources: IRS Publication 550 (2025), IRC §1091, §1211, §1212 and §6045(g), Rev. Rul. 2008-5, Instructions for Schedule D and Form 8949, NYSE holiday calendar. A calculation tool, not tax advice.