pokertracker and taxes

[illini99]

Does anyone use pokertracker as their only record for paying taxes? Is it sufficient?
If you don't use pokertracker as your record, what do you use and how do you record your sessions?

[Lost Wages]

That's what I use. I export my sessions to a spreadsheet at the end of each month. If you are not filing as a professional then you need to total your winning sessions and report that as income, then total your losing sessions and report that as a deduction.

Lost Wages

[HoldEmKillah]

And what if you ARE filing as a pro?

[unreal_nh]

[ QUOTE ]
And what if you ARE filing as a pro?

[/ QUOTE ]

Then i believe you file a schedule C. tell me if i'm wrong.

[StacysMom]

I have yet to hear of someone getting in trouble for not filing as a professional and not reporting session by session. I just report net income as other income and leave it at that. I cannot imagine jsomeone getting in trouble for doing it this way, especially when all your transfer recoreds reflect the amount of income you made.

[Lost Wages]

[ QUOTE ]
I have yet to hear of someone getting in trouble for not filing as a professional and not reporting session by session.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't actually report session by session, just your total wins and total losses. The IRS requires you to keep a session log as a record but you don't send it in. If you are audited you can most definitely be fined for inadequate record keeping and you risk having your deductions (losses) disallowed.

Lost Wages

[Python49]

It basically comes down to "none of us know sh*t for a fact so let's hope we arent the guy that's made an example and have to find out what's really the case the hard way..."

[lozen]

[ QUOTE ]
I have yet to hear of someone getting in trouble for not filing as a professional and not reporting session by session. I just report net income as other income and leave it at that. I cannot imagine jsomeone getting in trouble for doing it this way, especially when all your transfer recoreds reflect the amount of income you made.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a serious mistake. Being A CDN who knows US tax law very well you pay a higher tax rate on other income( commonly known on the form as unearned income) than you do if declaring as a main source of income. I do believe Billy Baxterbattled the IRs on this and won about 15 years ago.

[Nigel]

[ QUOTE ]
That's what I use. I export my sessions to a spreadsheet at the end of each month. If you are not filing as a professional then you need to total your winning sessions and report that as income, then total your losing sessions and report that as a deduction.

Lost Wages

[/ QUOTE ]

Lost,

Can you do that from PT or do you just do it manually from Access?

Thanks,

Nigel

[RunDownHouse]

I ran across these two posts on taxes and poker today. Thanks to Iggy (the BlogFather) for linking them.

Taxes and Online Gambling, Pt. 1 (http://www.taxabletalk.com/posts/1123805977.shtml)
Taxes and Online Gambling, Pt. 2 (http://www.taxabletalk.com/posts/1124333484.shtml)

[Voltron87]

which is cheaper, filing as a pro or as an amateur?

[Mempho]

[ QUOTE ]
which is cheaper, filing as a pro or as an amateur?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's totally according to your individual situation.

[Voltron87]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
which is cheaper, filing as a pro or as an amateur?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's totally according to your individual situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

haha, so absolutely nothing about this process is simple. great.

[Lost Wages]

You can export your sessions to Excel directly from PokerTracker. On the "Session Notes" tab, under "Session Details", click the print (p) button, then select "Export".

Lost Wages

[Nigel]

[ QUOTE ]
You can export your sessions to Excel directly from PokerTracker. On the "Session Notes" tab, under "Session Details", click the print (p) button, then select "Export".

Lost Wages

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the tip!

Nigel

[Gotmilk]

[ QUOTE ]

Quote:
And what if you ARE filing as a pro?



Then i believe you file a schedule C. tell me if i'm wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think yopu still report total wins and total losses on the Schedule C, not the net. I have fine records for my purposes for that, but who knows what the IRS would say about it. (I track cash in a cash account on MS Money and online on Pokertracker) To the main poster, from what I understand the accountant I asked couldn't think of a better record keeping system for tax purposes.

[broiler]

The Baxter case is a bad example to try to prove your point. Baxter's case was related to the treatment of his income pre-1981. The tax rate in his situation would have been 70% for unearned income and 50% for earned income. He was obviously willing to fight for the 20% difference in income tax rates. Baxter wanted to file as a professional.

In 1981, the US had a major tax code revision which removed the difference in income tax rates for earned and unearned income. As a result of this change, the income tax rate is exactly the same for these types of income. If you include SE tax as a part of the consideration, the earned income could be considered to have a higher tax rate now. I would give you that the increase in deductions available to a professional might make the tax rate lower on the earned income.

[PrincipalSkinner]

My understanding is that the BEST IRS-APPROVED way to determine poker income is (total of winning sessions) minus (total of losing sessions) plus bunuses plus rakeback.

Unfortunately, poker tracker (under the sessions tab) shows number of winning and losing sessions and total won (or lost) but does not give the info as the IRS wants it.

I table-hop a LOT (I have done 734 sessions since August 5, for example). At this rate I will do 12,722 sessions in a year. The thought of having to go through all these sessions tallying up winnings and "losings" is just mind-boggling; expecially considering that all the info is right there in pokertracker, just not presented in the format I need for taxes.

Wouldn't it be desirable if we could get pokertracker Pat to make a small change in the PT programming (under the sessions tab) to show the totals as desired by the IRS (described in the first paragraph above)?

If Pat were to make this change, then preparing our own taxes would be a snap. All we would have to do is start a new database on January 1 and read off the totals on December 31 (or quarterly as needed for estimated tax payments). I would also keep a notebook where I would record rakeback and bonuses received.

I don't have any idea how to use excel or the other number-crunching programs; am somewhat intimidated by them, and would rather not be bothered since this solution seems so simple.

Am I wrong on this, or wouldn't this make it SOOOOO much easier for everybody?? Please give me feedback before I approach Pat about this.

Thanks. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[illini99]

That would be great. I haven't tried exporting my data to excel yet, but I'm sure I'll have problems with that. And I'm lazy, and would prefer not to do this sort of thing. If pokertracker did it for me, life would be a little simpler.

I have another related question. Do you guys back up your data to cd, external hard drive, or what? I'm really clueless about this sort of thing. I've only played seriously for about a year, and my recordkeeping is inadequate for tax purposes. I'm trying to fix that.