How Ponticello works.
Four steps from a freshly opened Interactive Brokers account to a reconciled Italian Quadro RT or UK self-assessment — plus a US-side Form 1040 / Schedule D whose dual-sided math closes out. Same pipeline, run quietly, week after week.
The diagram
Four steps. One pipeline end to end.
Step → step, on a weekly clock. Reading top-to-bottom on mobile, left-to-right on desktop. Each cell jumps to the paragraph below it.
Plain language, step by step
What actually happens at each stage.
- Step01
Open an IB individual account
The client opens an Interactive Brokers individual brokerage account in their own name. As a US-tax person resident abroad, the client files Form W-8BEN at the account level to certify foreign status to the broker — the same form that lets IB apply the lower US–Italy or US–UK treaty withholding rates on US-source dividends, and that keeps the broker reporting on non-US forms. The US-side Form 1040 reporting obligation is unchanged: the W-8BEN tells the broker what to withhold; the IRS still expects the 1040.
- Step02
Replicate the S&P 500
Ponticello's execution layer buys the S&P 500's underlying constituents directly inside that IB account — no ETF wrapper, no UCITS fund, no PFIC presentation. The pilot intake runs two tiers: the $250 / month Sampled tier holds ≈ 100–150 carefully chosen constituents weighted to track the index, and the $5,000 Full tier holds all 500 constituents as fractional shares. Every line sits in the IB account as a real equity position you can audit row by row.
- Step03
Weekly harvesting sweeps
Every week, the harvester sweeps the book against a tax-lot model and flags positions where a realized loss would not collide with a 30-day wash-sale. The §1091 rule is honored by parking the freed-up cash (or rotating into a correlated proxy if a same-day replacement buys back is unavoidable), so the disallowed-loss window never opens. Across hundreds of small positions, the realized losses are dispersed across many lots rather than concentrated, and each minusvalenza arrives paired with the legacy lot it offset.
- Step04
Filings reconcile both sides
Local filings reflect the results. Italian residents see the lossy-sweep output flow into Quadro RT (capital gains), Redditi Diversi (dividends), and Quadro RW / IVAFE (foreign-held wealth tax), with ECB-dated FX conversions and a Libro Giornale feed ready for Italian fintech tooling such as Dichiarativo or MoneyViz. UK residents route the same book into the self-assessment foreign-income and foreign-capital-gains sections. The US-side Form 1040 / Schedule D is unchanged in shape — but reconciled against the harvested-lot notes so dual-sided math ends near net zero.
Where this lands you
Ready to see it run on your numbers?
The pipeline above doesn't take effect until your portfolio size, residency status and broker history are factored in. The waitlist qualification page walks through those inputs in a few minutes.