I work full time and want to move beyond my Cash PIE's and Term Deposits, currently i'm doing research on other investment options including forex

2 questions:

a) If i keep my full-time job earning ~$60K PA and do a little forex on the side, what are my tax obligations if i trade personally i.e. not through a company? is it just a case of pay 39% tax on my positive returns for each financial year and not get a tax rebate if i lose money? Is this the case or is there a better way of doing this?

b) Who should i do my forex trading through? I had a brief look at ASB securities and it seems like i have to pay a lot of fees and have around about $20,000 in a foreign account at a time, which is too high a % of my portfolio (i only have about $30K right now). At the same time the smaller forex places look kinda dodgy to me, never heard of them before, cheap looking websites, etc.

Thank in advance for answers to these questions and any other suggestions