Re: Ed Miller\'s Tax Article
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In pt you can export all of your sessions to an excel spread sheet. Then you can set up a plus column and a minus column and some "if statements" to put the results of each session in the appropiate column. The sum of the plus col is your gross winnings and the sum of the minus col is your gross losses. There are probably more elegant ways to do it, but this works.
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This is probably not the best way though, since you will overestimate your tax liability with this method. The exact definition of a "session" as it pertains to online gambling hasn't really been established, but I think it is reasonable to consider any given period of time that I am playing multiple tables to all be a part of one session. If I play for 4 hours on a total of 8 different tables (including table switches), take a 10 minute break to go to the restroom and grab a snack, then play 3 more hours at 7 different tables, that will show up as 15 sessions in PT, but I would tend to think of it as one 7-hour session. Because of that, I feel that it is reasonable to net my earnings during that session rather than reporting a few winning sessions and a few losing sessions for that time period. I could be very wrong, but I think it would be an easy stance to argue.
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Agreed in full. You are giving away money if you utilize PT's definition of "session." The fact of the matter is that online poker is fundamentally different than B&M poker in that you can multi-table (ok, fine, Bill Fillmaff multitables B&M, but he's a poker god/worldwide champ) and table change so rapidly. As I mentioned above, in 2004 I believe I utilized a definition of session as "any poker playing that was immediately continuous with other poker play (e.g. I started at one table at 2pm and then added another at 2:15 while still playing the first table), or any poker play within 10 minutes of prior poker play (e.g. I started at 2pm, played one table until 2:45, took a 10 minute break to go to the john, and then resumed play at 2:55)." I suppose the 10 minute proximity rule I used is a bit arbitrary and perhaps not ideal (but what would make 5 minutes or 15 minutes more accurate?). Here's a question that might help resolve it: do B&M pros count it as one session or two sessions when they get up from a table, eat dinner, and then return to the same table (or another table of the same limit if they've been moved via must-move)? If the answer is one session, then we might be able to link online sessions as far apart as 90 minutes. Of course the ultimate would be to treat the year as a single, long session, but that is clearly a bad faith interpretation of the law.
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