I've taken a real pounding in a small IRA that I have. Can I take a loss against regular income?

I've taken a real pounding in a small IRA that I have. Can I take a loss against regular income?

No, you can't offset your losses in your IRA with regular income. Everyone likes to extol the tax virtues of an IRA, but with the good always comes the bad, and this is a great example of the possible bad. When you put money into an IRA, it goes in pretax. When it grows, it grows tax free. Thus, thinking logically, you are forced to the conclusion that when it shrinks, it shrinks tax free.

Now that your IRA has decreased so much, you might look into rolling your IRA into a Roth IRA. This should minimize the tax bill up front, and then you'll be tax free on the way out!