Options: in or out of the money?

a question for any options-knowledgeable people out there...

let's say i'm convinced a stock is going down, and i want to use this to my advantage. however:
- i cannot short the stock
- i am NOT concerned about leveraging my investment (i.e. i can easily afford 1/3 to 1/2 the stock price)

is the best strategy to pick put options that are far in-the-money ( which have deltas close to 1 ) to just follow the stock down?

are there other repercussions of picking these more expensive options, like tax conserations?

You cannot say one choice is better and one choice is worse in all circumstances.

A deep-in-the-money (DITM) put, with a delta near -1, will have a risk profile much more similar to a short stock position than an out-of-the-money (OTM) put.

A DITM put risks more dollars per contract if the stock goes up, but an OTM put can lose a larger percentage more quickly if the stock fails to go down.

A DITM put will make more dollars per contract if the stock goes down, but if the stock drops severely enough an OTM put will earn a much larger percentage.

A far-out-of-the-money (FOTM) put will be very inexpensive, but will usually result in a loss of 100% of your investment. However, the return can be huge if the stock drops below the strike price. FOTM options are often compared to lottery tickets.

There are no tax considerations that I can think of. One other consideration is that sometimes the spread between the bid and ask prices are larger the further the stock price is from the strke price.