Am I admitting to breaking the law when I pay my taxes on winnings?

[Mizzles]

Recent 60 min segment stated "internet gambling is 100% illegal"

So now when I pay taxes on my internet poker winnings, I am in essence admitting I gambled online and documenting that I have broken the law?

Is this something of concern?

Mizzles

[teddyFBI]

Ask Al Capone.

[Mizzles]

[ QUOTE ]
Ask Al Capone.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pardon the ignorance, but I don't know what you mean by this, could you please elaborate, thanks

Mizzles

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ask Al Capone.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pardon the ignorance, but I don't know what you mean by this, could you please elaborate, thanks

Mizzles

[/ QUOTE ]

Al Capoen was brought down for income tax evasion.

[uaw420rook]

keep records of each session. file taxes and pay the man= no incarceration.
ignore responsibility of being an American citizen=
playing cards for smokes

[TheMetetron]

No.

Gambling online isn't necessarily illegal, despite what 60 minutes says.

[citanul]

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No.

Gambling online isn't necessarily illegal, despite what 60 minutes says.

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in this country things are legal unless there is a law that specifically says they are not. there is no law that says that gambling online is illegal.

[srw5n]

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in this country things are legal unless there is a law that specifically says they are not. there is no law that says that gambling online is illegal.

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Nothing could be further from the truth. Though if you are speaking exclusively of Federal law you are partially correct.

In the case of online gambling it's a gray area, but for a variety of reasons you are reasonably safe from any federal action.

[pudley4]

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No.

Gambling online isn't necessarily illegal, despite what 60 minutes says.

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there is no Federal law that says that gambling online is illegal. There are some states that have laws against gambling online - Nevada for one

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fixed.

There's a box on the 1040 form for gambling winnings (if you don't itemize it's pretty easy). You don't have to specify what kind of gambling you did. If you want to claim gambling losses, that's where it gets a lot more complicated. I've just calculated all the money I moved to my bank account in a year and subtracted what I'd deposited and entered that figure (no loss for any given year). Since the online gambling is illegal according to the DoJ, there really aren't tax codes to address it and this seemed like a good faith effort on my part to pay my taxes. If the U.S. isn't going to bother to make it legal and regulate it, that's about all we can do.

However, there is actually a far more elaborate system that the pros use to track their wins and losses from legal brick and mortar gambling (Phil Gordon addresses it somewhere on the Full Tilt site) but those tax regulations are written for a system where a player buys chips from one source, plays at one table at a time, and cashes out their chips at the same source. Even using poker tracker I don't see how anyone could apply these sort of regulations to online winnings because the B&M system works by tracking individual sessions. Online people jump from table to table, site to site, play in multiple currencies at times, get bonuses, rakeback, and all kinds of other things that don't really apply to brick and mortar play.

If someone is unlucky enough to get audited (probably more likely for those with no other source of income), they at least should have tried to pay taxes on their winnings because chances are they will have screwed something up according to the IRS and owe a penalty on whatever figure they didn't pay taxes on. But the only sure way to get screwed is try to hide the money or not pay taxes on it at all even if it IS supposed to be illegal (as Capone found out the hard way).