Question for Tax experts &/or Forex traders

TheCub

Active Member
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Messages
58
Greets Tax experts & forex traders

I have been trading forex on a local broker's demo account for the past few months & I'm ready to go live.
Alright, so my question is, on the profits I make; how do I declare them to SARS & how much tax am I likely to pay on them?

Thanx in advance
 

Thor

Honorary Master
Joined
Jun 5, 2014
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44,236
What broker are you using? I would also like to explore this.
 

HavocXphere

Honorary Master
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
Messages
33,155
Mine sends me a tax pack with all the calculations

Well for shares and interest bearing stuff. Haven't tried fx
 
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borga

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 13, 2009
Messages
227
One thing someone once mentioned to me is that on a demo account when you sell/close your position, it is immediately closed/sold. However in a real trade you need to match to a counter party who buys the instrument, so it may not be as easy to make profits on a real account than on a demo account.
 

Mista_Mobsta

Expert Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
3,376
As far as I understand it, your income (Profit) will be taxed as part of your income due to the fact that FX is basically speculating and thus won't form part of the CGT that applies to shares and unit trust gains etc. So any income made (profits realised in ZAR terms) you have to declare and will form part of the calculation of your marginal tax rate.
 

Alton Turner Blackwood

Honorary Master
Joined
Apr 30, 2010
Messages
27,483
One thing someone once mentioned to me is that on a demo account when you sell/close your position, it is immediately closed/sold. However in a real trade you need to match to a counter party who buys the instrument, so it may not be as easy to make profits on a real account than on a demo account.
That's somewhat true, but nowadays the brokers are also market makers. Meaning if there's nobody to take the opposite position to yours, then the broker will take it.

What is however a problem with demo account is there's no slippage. When trading on a live account, the larger the lot size the bigger the slippage...and this will either cost or make you money :)

The biggest difference between a demo and a live account is...YOU!

A real account is much more psychologically taxing, much, much more. And the reason is simple: no longer are you trading with monopoly money, money you lose or gain result in real losses or gains.

How much are you willing to lose before you walk away?
How greedy are you;when do you take profit?
How do you react when you lose a great deal of money?

This is the reason why some write EA's/robots which we program with our algorithms and leave on a VPS in Europe somwhere to trade on its own - thereby taking the emotions out of trading.

Why don't you run it on a server in SA you ask. Two reasons:
1) blazingly fast lines with very low latency to the Forex data centres
2) no loadshedding :D

disclaimer: this is not in any way, shape or form intended to be financial advice!!!
 
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