[WichitaDM]

Well i know ill probably get jumped on big time for this. But i have been filing my poker winnings in the other income section of my return for 3 years and the irs seems to be ok with that. Since i only play online and am a winning player, there are no losses to deduct(some people will really have a problem with that, but i think its reasonable and also legal under current tax code.) The IRS has gladly been accpeting my money with no problems and even sends me quarterly filing papers to make it easy to continue to pay. I think if ur not comfortable with the situation get a CPA, but the IRS is reasonable as long as you make a good faith effort to pay the taxes on the money you earn. I think if you file as unemployed or student or w/e and list your winnings in other income this is well within the boundries of the law(read the link in the first post it talks about doing this). If i ever had any substantial losses live or w/e i would deduct these.

I also doubt the IRS is going to try and make you file as a professional. They have been fighting for years to try and keep this from being possible going all the way to the supreme court.(Again the linked article section 3) For these reasons i dont think its mandatory to file as a proffessional if you dont want to(and mainly to avoid the 15.3% self employed income tax). I realize there are disadvantages to this(namely the inability to write off expenses) but i doubt there can be a huge difference one way or the other frankly. Just my 2c