I Got The Book

[dakine]

"Tax Help For the Frugal Gambler." I scanned through all 77 pages and was amazed at a lot of the information.
Partial Quote from one of the authors, Marissa Chien,(MC): "One point I want to mention here is that having no records is better than having fabricated records."

Tax Issues for Live Poker Play.

Quote from MC.: "Much of what we've discussed so far also applies to the gambler who plays live poker. Essentially, the non-tournament live-("ring"-) poker player treats the time spent in one game as a session. Yesterday, I sat down at 3 p.m. with a $100 and left at 4 p.m. with $200. Hence, I won $100. Today, I sit down with $100 and walk away with nothing. Hence, I've lost $100. Thats pretty simple and straightforward.

The complexity comes with the regulations governing the taxation of poker-tournament income. In theory, tournaments are just a ring game where all the players put their money in the pot and the last person remaining wins the pot. But that's not how the IRS views it. Without going into a long drawn-out explanation as to why, in most cardrooms today, you receive a W-2G if you win more than $600 (as opposed to $1200 for slots) in a tournament. The peculier thing is that satellite tournaments are not considered "tournaments" and therefore no W-2Gs are issued, even though satellite-tournaments can be as high as $10,000! (But of course, if you win $10K in a satellite, you should report it as income-even without the the W-2G.)end of Quote.

Good book, lots of tax issues information.

[plaster8]

Where did you get the book? Amazon search came up blank.

[dakine]

[ QUOTE ]
Where did you get the book? Amazon search came up blank.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://www.greatstuff4gamblers.com/P...temNumber=1337 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[kgrad5]

dakine, did you used to play war2 by any chance?

[TimM]

[ QUOTE ]
The peculier thing is that satellite tournaments are not considered "tournaments" and therefore no W-2Gs are issued, even though satellite-tournaments can be as high as $10,000! (But of course, if you win $10K in a satellite, you should report it as income-even without the the W-2G.)end of Quote.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you win a satellite, then bust out of the money in the main event, you have won nothing. In fact you have lost the original buy in for the satellite. So why would you declare the value of the satellite prize?

If you do, it would seem to me that you can then deduct the value of the satellite prize, as well as the satellite buy-in, in itemized deductions (up to the extent of your winnings, of course).

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]
If you win a satellite, then bust out of the money in the main event, you have won nothing.

[/ QUOTE ]
You won an entry into the main tournament. That isn't cash, but it still has value. The fact that you didn't end up winning the main touranment has no relevance to the value of the prize you won in the first satellite. By your reasoning if you won a car, would you not feel you were supposed to pay taxes on the value of the car? After all it isn't cash?

[dakine]

[ QUOTE ]
dakine, did you used to play war2 by any chance?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

[dakine]

"The Book" another excerpt:
Quote, MC: "In this post 9/11 era, we must all be aware of the USA Patriot Act. In addition to the Currency Transaction Report (CTR) reporting requirements of transactions of more than $10,000 in a day, the Patriots Act now requires that all financial institutions (and that includes casinos, as well as such obvious ones as banks) report all "suspicious" transactions of more than $3,000 to FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), the U.S. Treasury Department's financial-crimes tracking organiztion.
Make sure you don't irritate any casino employees or you might just find the feds knocking on your door.(end of Quote) [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Another one from an internet correspondent. Quote: "One of the inputs to the Discriminant Function used by the IRS to select returns for audit is proffession. General wisdom is that 'professional gambler' rates very high; I've seen the number 17 times more likely to be audited bandied about" EOQ

[WC64]

I might have to pick this book up.

Oh yeah bumping this up to get all Jennicide off all the articles on the first page of this section.