[Python49]

A few questions....

1) if you were to consider your bonuses as a "gift" (in reality its just party poker giving you back your rake.. thats why its after a certain # of hands) what the hell does the IRS do then? Tax an off shore poker account?

2) Next question is.... can you deduct rake too? If so that helps alot. For example if someone had gross earnings of 60k from poker, and total losses of 40k (20k profit), but it took them a boat load of hands because they had a low bb/100... and in the time it took them to make that 20k profit they spent 20k in rake (hypothetical) can they then deduct that as losses as well and have no taxable income as far as poker is concerned? Assuming they got no rakeback that is.

3) Next question is... what about the people who are filing their gambling income incorrectly and just reporting profits? What if they were to get audited... are they in the same boat as people who did not file at all?

4) I dont know why but when I was growing up for every job I had my mother told me to write down exempt from taxes and i've never paid taxes on anything. I presume with the amount of money involved with poker i'm not exempt from taxes on it... can someone tell me if my mother claiming me as a dependency has any effect on poker winnings?

Also, when talking to my college professor (accounting teacher/CPA) this is what he said to me...

"if i were you i wouldnt even worry about it, first off the IRS has much bigger fish to fry and it would cost them more money to audit you... second of all nothing is reported to them so theres a less than 1% chance of you being audited, thirdly, in the VERY unlikely event that you were, you would have a very strong case in court... as the poker room is off shore, you're a full time student, you are just transferring money thats already been taxed from one account to another"

Can anyone tell me if he is correct about anything?