NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Like many other investors, I have been hit with capital losses in the stock market over the past few years. I understand that I can deduct up to $3,000 in capital losses against regular income. But how many years can I carry forward my capital losses if I don't use them up in a given year?

-- Mark, Boston, Mass.

The good news is that you can continue to carry those losses forward as many years as you need to in order to use them up. The bad news is that if you're carrying losses forward for many years, then, man, you've got some major league losses.

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The skinny on capital losses goes like this. If you have capital losses, you must first offset them against any capital gains that you have. If after doing that you still have a capital loss, then you can apply that loss against up to $3,000 in regular income.

If you still have a loss, you can carry it forward in future years, although you've got to go through that process of offsetting the loss against capital gains again before applying it against ordinary income. (For an example of how this might work in the case of an individual investor, click here.)

There are a few other things you want to keep in mind. First, just because you've got a loss in a stock or fund doesn't mean that it's a lousy investment. So you may want to consider selling for the loss and then buying the stock or fund back.

If you do that, however, make sure you don't violate the IRS's "wash sale" rules, which say that if you sell a security at a loss, you can not deduct the loss if you buy the same security 30 days before or 30 days after the sale. In other words, including the day of sale, you have a 61-day window during which you can't buy that security again.

Although what I've told you here may already seem complicated enough, the truth is that there are even more wrinkles in our wonderful tax code when it comes to deducting capital losses. So to make sure you don't end up getting skewered by any of the IRS's rules or regulations, I recommend you take a look at IRS Publication 550: Investment Income and Expenses.

To download a copy, click here. It would be going too far to say you'll find it fascinating. But if you can plow through it, you should find all you'll need to know in order to turn those losses into tax savings.

Walter Updegrave is a senior editor at MONEY Magazine and is the author of "Investing for the Financially Challenged." He can be seen regularly Monday mornings at 7:40 am on CNNfn.