How to declare and carry foward capital loss in Canada?

Question

Here is my situation: I lost about 1500$ in stocks this year (a stupid mistake) and I have no capital gain. My online broker told me that a receipt will be sent at the end of the year for my taxes. I don't have a big income (8500$ this year) since I'm in college now. This means that I don't pay any taxes.

I will get my degree in 2011 and start to have a bigger income. Until then, I won't gain much more than 8000-9000$ in salary.

Can I carry over that 1500$ all the way to 2011 so I can deduct this amount on my bigger income? It's not worth it for now to deduct it for 2008, since I know that 1500$ is not in credit, but in deduction. And if I can fully carry the amount to 2011, how do I fill the schedules on my tax report for this year and the following years?

Thank you.

Answer 1

When you fill out your 2008 tax return in April 2009, you will complete Schedule 3 Capital Gains/Losses. On this form you will list all the stocks you sold during the year showing the losses you had.  Since you have no gains to apply them against the government will just keep a record of them and should it your letter of assessment.  

For the following years there is nothing to do unless you want to apply these losses against investment income, then you just place the amount you want to use on line 253 as a deduction for Net Capital losses of other years.