Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

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

Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

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

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It's totally according to your individual situation.

Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

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

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It's totally according to your individual situation.

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

Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

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

Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

[ 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

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Thanks for the tip!

Nigel

Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

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



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

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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.

Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

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.

Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

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. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: pokertracker and taxes
 

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.