Maybe you can explain briefly why this is so great. My view is that long term (LT) capital gain is just about the cheapest taxable income you can have, and del

Maybe you can explain briefly why this is so great. My view is that long term (LT) capital gain is just about the cheapest taxable income you can have, and deliberately generating cap loss to offset it is a waste of a favorable rate. The conclusion is that the only time cap loss "harvesting" really helps is when you have no LT gains (including cap gains distributions from mutual funds) to offset for the tax year, and you keep the loss to $3K or less so that it offsets higher-taxed ordinary income. Also, I think this info is easily available to many people, not just "ultra wealthy". I can log in to my ETrade account anytime and see every single purchase I made, including dividend reinvestments (DRIP), along with whether it represents a gain or loss at this moment (and how much). A sale is just a few clicks away. Finding a substitute investment for the 30 day wash sale period is helpful, I agree on that. And I suppose if there are multiple brokerage accounts spread around, it could help to track them all in one place, but better to simply consolidate them at one firm.