Would anyone who is in the know be able to tell me if my trading a taxable activity?

ie Return any gain on investment. Claim any losses.

Obviously would need to know the opening and closing balances of my portfolio and amount deposited for the financial year.

Anyone want to take a stab?

I would expect no tax. Anything you make is a capital gain, NZ has no capital gains tax.

Guess I was moving along the lines of you are intention of making an income from the trading of shares, which maybe defined by the regularity of trading, volume traded and possibly return on investment (or lack thereof).

But sweet you've convinced me & I'm happy.

We always recommend you consult your accountant - really the only advice we can give. It is possible that dividends earned here are taxable.

I have been wondering about this for some time. I'm not an accountant, but I do work in a related field.

While admin is obviously right (i.e. consult your tax professional if you really want to know the answer, and don't rely on dodgy "advice" from some person you've never met on a forum - including me), I would be very suprised if iPredict gains of whatever kind are not taxable. Dividends (and for that matter, gains made from trading) seem to have the characteristics of "income" as that word is defined under NZ tax law. The other interesting question would be at what point the gains would be taxable (assuming that I'm right, and they are).

While I doubt that IRD would start rounding up all traders, I would probably be a bit concerned about this issue if I were one of the top traders. I imagine they would be first on the list if IRD started taking an interest.

I would be interested to hear the views of a chartered accountant on this. I'm sure there must be one here somewhere!

Isn't the analogy to the TAB/Lotto closer than buying shares/financial arrangements?