Taxes and recordkeeping

[Tilt]

I saw a thread here recently that discussed taxation and linked to a website that recommended keeping a "session" diary for tax reporting.

I play many different games, tourneys, live play, etc., so I can't use PT for reporting. Has anyone constructed a good spreadhsheet for recordkeeping in a situation like this?

Please save your "don't report it" posts from this thread. My wife's a tax attorney so its not an option, even if I thought that was ethical. And its enough money to worry about in an audit.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[scrapperdog]

I just have my money sent to neteller and at the end of the year add up all the eft's I make to my bank account - the eft's out of my bank account.

[Schwartzy61]

There's a program called StatKing, it's 29.95. You input your sessions and it keeps track of them for you as well as calculating some statistics based on those sessions.

But the easiest way would be to go to Office Whatever and buy yourself a nice handy 1-subject college ruled notebook. In which you will write down the time/date buy-in place table # and people you played with if possible. The IRS prefers hand written records to computerized (presumably because they are harder to forge) so it's even better if audited. Another advantage to the notebook idea is that you can write down notes on the player's you faced that night and any peculiar moves they made.

If I was a live player I would combine the notebook/journal with StatKing. Fortunately I play online and can just use PokerTracker.