Keeping poker records for taxes
 

What kind of records am I supposed to be keeping on my poker playing for tax purposes?

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

Date, time of day, place, elapsed time, stakes, money won or lost, for each and EVERY session you play.

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

Diligent ones.

I'm assuming you live in the US, and I'm assuming you aren't filing a schedule C as a professional poker player.

Therefore, the Fed requires you to provide your total gambling winnings and total gambling losses you cannot just provide your net, and you cannot deduct in excess of your winnings.

To calculate total wins or total losses you need to sum all of your winning sessions and all your losing sessions. The IRS doesn't do a great job of defining an online "session" but some gambling tax experts have said that a continuous period of play at the same limit is a session, even if at multiple tables. However, different limits/games, different session. Use the search function or pm me later and I can send a link to the source.

You shold be able to back up what you claim by having a record of all your sessions. Where played, how much won/lost, etc.

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

dont forget to keep record of the table number and who was also present with you at the gambling establishment!

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

Can someone tell me if enough information is tracked by poker tracker to let it do the work and record it at tax time (backing up the db every week of course). Does anyone have any experience using this method?

Thanks!

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

Can you clarify your question[s]?

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

Pokertracker is all I'm going to use when I file for 2005. (except for tournaments. I keep seperate records of my own for that)

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

Man, seems like one gambling tax specialist could be set for clients for life just by posting in the classifieds here...

Even PokerTracker isn't authoritative on overall gambling income. It's often poor and tracking tournament costs (you have to manually enter them) and it definitely doesn't account for bonus-whoring or rakeback.

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

Yea how exactly do you factor those into in your taxes? Or should you not worry about them

Re: Keeping poker records for taxes
 

See discussion here.