Tax-loss harvesting (TLH) is a technique used to minimize taxes on your taxable investments by “harvesting” capital losses during market declines. With DIY investors, losses are usually only harvested once a year. But with an computer as your portfolio manager, you could attempt to harvest losses continually on a monthly or even daily basis.

Wealthfront, Betterment, and FutureAdvisor all tout the benefits of their automated tax-loss harvesting services, each claiming that their service could increase your returns somewhere between 1% and 3% a year on average. Those are impressive numbers, and most importantly a much bigger number than the fees they charge. Great deal?

Elisabeth Kashner of ETF.com takes a closer look at those claims. Here is my summary of the noted concerns:

• Tax-loss harvesting defers your taxes by lowering your cost basis. This means that you’ll have to pay more taxes later when you eventually sell (unless you die or donate it). Data presented by certain robo-advisors do not take this into account, and continue to avoid the subject even when confronted about it directly.
• Most of the claims rely on theoretical backtested data, not the results of actual client portfolios. This is somewhat understandable as many of them are new, but we find that when real-world results are being published, those excess return numbers have so far been under 1% annualized.
• More than one of them cherry-picked the period from 2000 to 2013 for their analysis, which has the ideal sequence of returns – big losses first (so you can harvest something) and then big gains afterward (so you can compound your tax-deferred money). If you choose other time periods the numbers can come out significantly less rosy.
• Most of the analyses assume that the investor is in the highest tax bracket (35% or higher), which maximizes the tax benefit. However, many investors in these services could be in the 15% income tax bracket or even 0% capital gains tax bracket. That will also lower the actual tax benefit of TLH.

Read the article comments as well. There, finance author Rick Ferri adds:

I agree the benefit of TLH isn’t 1%, but it isn’t 0.09% either. The answer is someplace in the middle – and it is investor specific.

I think this quote from the author sums things up well:

My point was not that there is never any value to TLH. It’s that predicting this value is fraught, because there are many variables. Given this variability, I find it questionable that the robo advisors’s marketing materials present best-case scenarios, sometimes without accounting for the terminal capital gains liability caused by the lowered basis.

Essentially, temper your expectations as the numbers being marketed at you are based on best-case scenarios. It is impossible to know the true benefit of tax-loss harvesting ahead of time, but quite possibly less than 1% annualized. This still leaves the possibility for the benefits of automated TLH to outweigh the cost, but it is nowhere near a certainty.

Updated 2014. I’ve gotten a few tax-filing questions regarding P2P lenders Prosper Lending and Lending Club. For tax year 2013, LendingClub provided individual investors extra guidance with their Tax Guide for Retail Investors [pdf]. Using this information, I have updated this post.

Don’t file too early. My first recommendation is to not print out or download any of your 1099s until mid-March. Both Prosper and LendingClub seem to regularly issue corrected and/or amended 1099 forms with new numbers late in February. If you already printed them out earlier, go back and make sure they haven’t been changed. After having to file an amended return a few years ago, I always wait until after mid-March to gather all my tax documents.

Where to find your tax documents. I don’t think either Prosper or Lendingclub sends you 1099 forms in the mail. The easiest way for me to direct you to these documents is for you to cut-and-paste the following URLs into your web browser and then log into your accounts. Here are screenshots of what the pages should look like for Prosper and LendingClub.

https://www.prosper.com/secure/account/common/statements.aspx

https://www.lendingclub.com/account/taxDocuments.action

Tax disclaimer. I am not a tax professional. The following is based on my best attempt at understanding the fuzzy world of P2P lending taxes. I am simply sharing how I’m going to do my personal tax return, but you should consult a tax professional for an expert opinion. You may not get all or most of these forms.

LendingClub

LendingClub 1099-OID. OID stands for original issue discount. The total of Box 1 is basically what LendingClub is reporting as the interest earned on your loans, net of fees. This interest should be reported on Schedule B and taxed as ordinary interest income (similar to interest from bank accounts).

LendingClub 1099-B (Recoveries for Charge-offs). If you had any loans charged-off*, but they still recovered some money later on, that will be reported here. It should be broken down into either short-term or long-term capital gains. Because it already tells me short-term or long-term, I will simply report the totals with acquisition and sell date(s) as “various”.

LendingClub 1099-B (Folio secondary market). If you sold any loans on the secondary Folio market, then the sales should be reported here. It should also be broken down into either short-term or long-term gains or losses. I will simply report the totals on Schedule D, using my acquisition and sell date(s) as “various”.

LendingClub 1099-MISC. I would just type this form into TurboTax box-by-box or submit directly to your accountant, usually under “Other Income”. Box 7 amounts will be subject to self-employment taxes, Box 3 amounts will not.

Prosper Lending

Prosper 1099-OID. Similar story to the LendingClub 1099-OID above, except they just give you the total from all your loans. Again, I have all zeros except for Box 1, which I will report as ordinary interest income on Schedule B.

Prosper 1099-B (Recoveries for Charge-offs). Again, anything listed here should be broken down into either short-term or long-term capital gains/losses and recorded on Schedule D. Prosper includes loan charge-offs on this form.

Prosper 1099-B (Folio secondary market). Again, anything listed here should also be broken down into either short-term or long-term gains or losses.

Prosper 1099-MISC. I would just type this form into TurboTax box-by-box or submit directly to your accountant, and it should be pretty straightforward. Box 7 amounts will be subject to self-employment taxes, Box 3 amounts will not.

*Reporting Charge-offs

If you have loans that were charged-off in 2013 (loan is very late and attempts to collect have failed, so they give up), you can write them off as a non-business bad debt. You can find these in either your year-end statements (LendingClub) or your 1099-B form (Prosper). These are all treated as short-term capital losses, which you can use to offset short-term capital gains from other investments or you can deduct against up to $3,000 in ordinary income per year (with the balance carrying forward to the next year).

More resources: Let me also recommend Peter Renton’s post at LendAcademy, the follow-up comments on that post, and this forum post by AmCap as good references for an intelligent discussion on the topic. Also see the LendingClub and Prosper tax pages, even though they aren’t especially helpful.