The AMT is an entirely different way to calculate your taxes, and it's not really an alternative, as the name suggests. You have no choice. And it's affecting more and more people all the time.

Lower taxes are great, but if its going to cost you money, it's not worth it. If a stock hits your sell range after 3 months, do you really want to risk 9 more months of fluctuation to get a lower tax rate?

You're going to need all that information to determine cost to calculate your gain or loss at a later date.

The biggest mistake regarding record-keeping is not writing things down or not remembering where you wrote it down.

There's an alternative. There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways. It's a different way.

Once you've done the sale, the only way to fix that is with a time machine. But you can take steps to minimize the (tax) impact.