Taxes and Investing

[jively]

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Withdrawing money to a bank account doesn't have any effect on taxes. Neither does taking cash and using it as a bankroll in Vegas. Taxes are determined by the net amount you win if a pro and gross amount you win - deducted losses if you are not. There is a lot of wiggle room but none that says you don't have to declare until you remove your money from a poker site.

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This is correct. There are frequent posts about this in the Legislation forum.

As you are probably not a professional poker player, you have to break down each of your gambling "sessions" into winning sessions and losing sessions. You add up all of the winning sessions and list that as income on the first page of form 1040, and add up all of the losing sessions and list that as an itemized deduction on Schedule A.

Because of this quirky nature, you may owe taxes even if you are a breakeven or losing player. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

For online sessions, you can get really accurate data from Pokertracker if you use that. What is a "session" is another issue. If you are logging in, and playing one table of the same game for x hours, that is a session. If your table breaks and you move quickly to another table, that is still the same session. If later in the same day you log in again, the IRS will probably consider that another session.

If you are multitabling the same game, you should be able to combine those into one session. If you are playing different games, or cash and tournaments at the same time, you probably need to break those down into separate sessions.

-Tom