Any tax advice for foreigners (esp. Canadians) residing in the US

[nevadaJACK]

I'm a Canadian on a student visa in the US. As an American resident, though, I'm supposed to pay taxes on my poker winnings, but I had the following bright idea yesterday and want to know if anyone's done something similar, or have any other comments as to how I should best go about this.

I'm going to essentially stop playing under all my accounts and open up new ones under my mother's name (she still lives in Canada and says she's OK with this)...so technically speaking "she'll" be the one earning income from this, because the poker accounts (and bank accounts I'll be cashing out to) are all in her name...and as a Canadian "her" poker winnings will not be taxable.

--> Besides the fact that playing under someone else's account violates poker sites' T&C's, from a legal perspective (and yes, I know this whole thing is a grey legal area anyway), would there be any kind of tax fraud/evasion going on here?

(BTW, I wouldn't worry about this all that much except that this year my winnings were around $30,000, so we're talking about an $6K - $8K question here)

[jdl22]

Something you should look into is whether the US has a tax agreement with your country. I have a friend from Spain and he pays his taxes to his own country and doesn't have to pay them to the US. Apparently the US government made an agreement with Spain so that Americans living there pay US taxes only and Spanish here only pay in Spain.

Look into that since Canadians don't pay tax on gambling based on what I've read here.

[broiler]

I will go even further and say that there is a US-Canada tax treaty. IRS Publication 597 contains all of the details. I did a quick search and it appears that Article XX deals with students. I can't guaranty that since Adobe would freeze up my compter for a document of that size. Every website I found had a .pdf file of the entire publication.

If there is an exception for you about US tax, it should be in there.

[TorontoCFE]

If you don't have a permanent home in the US (as a student I assume no), then you would be considered a non-resident alien under the Canada-US tax treaty.

This means that you would only be liable to US tax on income you get from a US source or that is connected to a trade or business in the US.

Poker would not meet those criteria so any tax would come from Canadian tax liability. If the poker earnings don't qualify as a business, then they are tax exempt.

You don't need to hide your identity and play under someone else's name and risk other consequences.