For tax purposes, do reload bonuses count as gambling winnings?

[Luv2DriveTT]

[ QUOTE ]


1. As a "recreational" player reporting US income, you can only deduct gambling losses to the extent of winnings, and only if you have enough deductions to itemize them on a Schedule A.

[/ QUOTE ]

Keep in mind that you must total ALL your gambling capital gains. Then seperatly total all your gabling losses (capital losses). Capital gains gets placed on your 1040 listed under "Other Income", and Capital Losses gets listed on your Schedule A, which is used to get deductions.

TT [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

[Nekura]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm pretty sure that if my dog shat $100 then that would also be taxable income.

[/ QUOTE ]

Only if you write your dog off as a dependent...

[RamGad]

thanks so much for the replies guys. If somebody in Wa state could PM me about how they go about doing this tax thing, if they know a good accountant in the South Sound area, etc. Also, anybody know about the reservation laws? I would be greatly appreciative. I really appreciate everyone's help on here. I want to reciprocate and will be signing up to new rooms soon, so I will be offering referals. Thanks again.

[MicroBob]

i think there's been some good advice given in this thread.

i don't really know much about the tax stuff...but I suggest that many HR Block types won't know what on earth you're trying to do as many are not aware that you can file a schedule-C as a professional gambler.
I KNOW this for fact because my Dad, in his retirement-boredom years, Aced their course and worked for HR Block for 1 tax-season a year or 2 ago...and HE wasn't aware of this until I told him. And he promises me that if he didn't know this then he's certain a lot of other HR Block'ers certainly wouldn't either as he was more familiar with the tax laws then most of them.


Anyway, for more info you may want to consider purchasing Gambler's Guide to Taxes by Walter Lewis. I think it can help steer you towards possibly even being comfortable enough to file it yourself.
It does not deal with online-gambling specifically...but does a good job addressing the whole 'professional' gambler filing a sched-C bit.

there's also a section in there about a super-high-priced whale who had a court-case over whether he had to pay taxes on the comps/gifts he received from the casino.
They would give him a Cadillac or something and then the IRS argued that that counted as income or capital-gains or something.
I believe it was decided that he did NOT have to pay taxes on it though because he wasn't playing there with the expressed purpose of receiving the gifts....it as something that the casino just gave him, completely unasked for.

Something like that anyway....but somebody else may know more about it and I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone told me I had all wrong and was remembering it incorrectly.
I don't know if that case could be stretched to include online-casino bonuses or not.


FWIW - I'm not seperating them out and am just including it all in my total income that I made.

[Luv2DriveTT]

Bob:

You got the whale story correct. Its a surprisingly easy to read book, and its quite interesting. I cannot wait till we change the tax code, time for a value added tax - no more income tax!

TT [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]