Poker and Taxes....This is why there is so much confusion

[MicroBob]

Well...you had a smiley-face in there so this must be some kind of a joke.

Unfortunately, I don't know what RBS is so I guess I don't get it.

My initial thought is Random Bull-Sh--...in which case I am ALL about RBS.

[moondogg]

[ QUOTE ]
Well...you had a smiley-face in there so this must be some kind of a joke.

Unfortunately, I don't know what RBS is so I guess I don't get it.

My initial thought is Random Bull-Sh--...in which case I am ALL about RBS.

[/ QUOTE ]

RBS Taxes, publishers of Tax Guide for Gamblers.

Edit: Just realized that you the book you were referring to is a different one.

[fnord_too]

Fantastic post, thank you!

[2ndGoat]

<<Jesus Bob, how much of RBS do you own?>>

Ownership or not, is a good book... RBS is better than their B.S.!

[DesertCat]

[ QUOTE ]
If you are a professional gambler, thus filing as a business, you are entitled to use all of the tax code which relates to a business, and includes using a SEP IRA.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think this a very important point, so I'll resurrect this thread. Esp. for Bob. By paying self employment tax, you create for yourself the ability to pay less income tax, via contributions to SEP IRA's or self employed 401ks, etc. I'm not a CPA, and don't know your specific situation, but you typically can end up paying less tax overall this way.

In my case, I'm a full time investor. I willingly pay self employment tax on some of my (short term) capital gains, so I can put a similar amount into self employed 401k for myself and my wife. This makes that income free of income tax. Since the income tax rate is higher than the self employment tax, it reduces my overall taxes. And the 401k contributions compound tax free until retirement.

[Matty]

Can someone tell me where in the hell in PokerTracker I can find my gross winnings / losses?

I only made like $4,000 profit playing poker last year, but my tax preparer is telling me that I have to count my winnings and losses by hand and not by session.

This could [censored] me out of financial aid for school.

[witeknite]

Don't worry. It's supposed to be by session. The fuzzy line for us on-line players is wether a session is a solid stretch of multi-tabling, or each sitting at every table. I'm erring on the side of caution and going with every table.

As to your initla question, under the session tab you can export you total list of session out to excel. After that you need to open the file in excel and tabulate your winning sessions and your losing sessions. The easiest way to do that is, in a separate cell put in "=sumif(?:?,">0")" where the ?'s are the letters of the colunms that have the CO_Won field. Also only paste in what is inside the outer quotation marks. For you losing sessions change ">0" to "<0". Hope this helps.

WiteKnite

[Kellon]

Check out this link.

[MicroBob]

get another tax preparer. seriously.


My understanding is that it could be interpreted by each hand (or each bet placed....which I think stemmed from a previous court-decision that involved sports-handicapping or horse-racing).
But it is kind of silly to thing that any judge would hold you to that standard of knowing that you won $25 in one pot (and thus owe taxes on that $25) but did not win the next pot so you don't owe taxes on it.


Try to make a good faith effort to report your taxes accurately and hopefully you will be okay.


I don't go by the 'session' on pokertracker.
I go by daily wins and losses and add it up that way.


As was noted previously in this thread I'm hardly an expert though.



reply to other post - thanks for the thoughts on the 401k. But right now I'm looking at paying a ton in taxes already and will be kind of running short after I pony up the check for a few grand.
I talked with my Dad about it and I suggested that contributing to a 401k is probably not a good idea for me right now since it would mean less money in my roll NOW and that would mean I would have to step back a limit (as I wouldn't feel comfortable playing at the higher limit).
My Dad agreed with me....the parents have made contributions to a couple different retirement funds for me since I was born so i'm not as concerned about the money when I turn 60 as I am about the money right now.

It's a decent idea obviously for those in a different situation...and I will probably consider it in the future (assuming I stay with this poker 'thing'). But if I contribute $2k to a 401k I probably only save $500-$750 in taxes (I'm guessing) meaning I'm left with less total money right now which wouldn't be very good.

[Kellon]

[ QUOTE ]
get another tax preparer. seriously.


[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't want to say this, but I sure thought it, and since you said it, I'll second it. Telling someone to count their winnings by the hand tells me, loud and clear, they haven't a clue about reporting W & L from gambling.