Time to take capital gains?

[ESRBob]

On first bash through my rebalancing, it looks like the following for me:

Taxable Interest and nonqual Divs, net rents and biz income 1.8% of portfolio

LTCG Distributions from funds 1.5% of portfolio

LTCG generated from selling funds during rebalancing 1.1% of portfolio
(assumes 30% of sale amount is taxable as LTCG- haven't done the actual math yet, but we do sell winners during rebalancing so these gains will be there and taxable)

Total: 4.4% of portfolio is taxable -- some at full income rates, some at preferred rates, and much/most of it sheltered.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Unless you made some (ahem) suboptimal trading decisions in 2000-2002 and are sitting on a pile of long term capital loss carryforwards. (moi??!)

I used up all my LT loss carryovers, but i still have $65k in short term losses to use.

Thought the nasdaq was a decent buy at 3000 on the way down and then thought it was a real bargain at 2000. When it hit 1200 I realized my error and sold when it bounced back up to 2000.

I sure have enjoyed having all of my gains wiped out, and an extra $3000 (or whatever the hell it is) scratched from ordinary income every year.

But I'd rather have the money. Or be paying something a little higher than a couple of percentage points in taxes. Err..maybe not the latter...