So you're planning on not filing your taxes....

[ddubois]

As I understand it, what you are legally supposed to do is report every session, with winning sessions going towards gross income, and losing sessions as itemized deductions. With the ease of hoppping from table to table, the ability to play many tables at once, the ability to get games at many different sites, this is completely unviable amount of records-keeping for an individual, sans PokerTracker. And even with PokerTracker, if you have 100k hands last year, you might have had say 1000 sessions. Do you really want to file a tax form with 500 line items in one area nd 500 more line items in another? Moreover, the effect of reporting this way will throttle your gross income to extrordianry levels even if you are just a break-even player, putting you into a higher tax bracket and costing you alot of money. I am very happy with my country, so I am willing to pay taxes on my earnings, but I wasn't willing to do that. I considered reporting my gambling winnings by just reporting one flat number that was equal to my withdrawls, or perhaps equal to my withdrawls - my deposits - my poker account balances. But this is illegal, and doing this removes my ablity to claim ignorance in the future. Worse, doing this may actually have the undesired effect of making me more likely to be audited! It's really a big clusterfck.

[Biznetman230]

I agree you should pay your taxes but I have no clue where to begin with my poker winnings and don't have the time to try to figure out the tax code. When it comes to paying income taxes and capital gains on stocks everything is layed out for you and makes complete sense. I have found no source online or in talking to accountants that clearly lay out what you have to do to be legally covered. There is so much up in the air....
For example if I make $1,000 playing online and then lose $1,000 playing poker in Vegas I have made 0 profit. If I get audited there is no way to prove I lost $1,000 in Vegas. If you keep a poker log thats just your word against theres. Anyone who says they made a profit online can just say they lost a ton of money playing poker in Vegas.
Also if you want to get technical, how are you reporting your income that comes from clearing a bonus, a sign up bonus, referring a friend cash, or when a site just gives you free cash. Does my $50 cash bonus for referring a friend get taxed as regular income? I played 1,400 raked hands at Party and got $200 extra put into my account, is that considered regular income. You will go insane thinking about this stuff.

If anyone knows of somewhere I can find complete detailed accurate info that describes how to file poker winnings plus all the bonuses I would love to read it. Thanks

[Broken Glass Can]

I wasn't suggesting anything improper on your part.

I wonder about these overzealous tellers though. Do you think tellers get a kick out of screwing with people over their check cashing?

Maybe we should seek out a bank with friendly tellers. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[GrannyMae]

If anyone knows of somewhere I can find complete detailed accurate info that describes how to file poker winnings plus all the bonuses I would love to read it. Thanks

you really need a CPA that knows gaming. there are many out there.

general info you read might not apply to your state or situation, and most importantly, it can be old info that the codes have been altered.

be careful with do it yourself if it based on stuff you read on the internet

[Yosemite Mark]

[ QUOTE ]

If anyone knows of somewhere I can find complete detailed accurate info that describes how to file poker winnings plus all the bonuses I would love to read it. Thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

For the ultimate answer to all tax quesions, you should rely on a tax professional, not the internet. That being said, this site has a good collection of information:
http://www.onlinepokerfaq.com/guide/us-taxes.html

[GrannyMae]

Maybe we should seek out a bank with friendly tellers.

very very funny you asked this.

i have a smarmy friend who is an attorney in mississippi. he says to get NETeller checks for $4k-ish. then, you go to the bank and fill out a depo slip for the check and ask for $3k cashback and net deposit 1k.

all you need to do is have the 3k in your account to do this. apparently, this is considered only a $1k transaction. i had never thought of this, but if i ever were to start using check cashing stores again, i probably would use this method instead. he also suggests sending fruit baskets to the tellers, which is not a bad idea.

the whole idea is to get your money to the US, then pay your taxes. the whole thing with check cashing stores or this other method, like i said, is to keep the DoJ from sniffing yer' drawers.
(though that sounds like fun if you ask me)

there are many ways to move moeny around and i am no angel in utilizing these methods. however, as long as i pay what my CPA tells me, then i'm going to survive an audit. these other tricks just keep you from being singled out as noriega's nephew.

[Broken Glass Can]

There are a lot of good threads right here on 2+2. Try a search like: +taxes -Re:

[toss]

Thanks Yosemite. That answered just about all of my questions.

[hate]

Nevermind

[GrannyMae]

[ QUOTE ]
I just want to confirm this, but if I don't itemize, which I've never had to bother with before, I cannot put anything except my gross sum of winning sessions as gambling income on my 1040? The only way I'll be able to use the net as my total gambling winnings is if I itemize and list or at least have ready for an audit each winning and losing session?

[/ QUOTE ]

as of the latest tax laws, yes. you have it correct.