Another tax question (for mainly MTT players)

[xsizzurpx]

I basically only play MTTs I haven't really kept very good records because my stats are tracked on officialpokerrankings.com. I know you are supposed to record wins and losses seperately for taxes so my question is can I just use "Prizes" as wins and "Prizes" - "Profit" as losses? This would seem to work, but I'm not sure how the IRS would like this. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[mo42nyy]

how the [censored] do they know if u play a bunch of 30 dollar tournamnets didnt cash in most of them then ran like jamie gold and took one down for 100k or whatever?

[xsizzurpx]

it doesn't matter your losses would still be prizes-profit and your wins would still be prizes wouldn't it?

[ericicecream]

I think the technically correct thing would be to get the list of tournaments played and use each cash (less the buy-in) as a profit and each out of the money finish as a loss. Claim your profit as income on line 21(other income) and deduct your losses on schedule A.

If you at least make a valid attempt to pay the correct tax you will probably not have much problem with the IRS.