[TheEngineer]

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i'm curious, why is this a bad thing?

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IMO if the PPA is going to support taxation of on-line poker through the use of lisencing fees, it should demand some common sense changes to gambling taxation in return. Why agree in one respect and perhaps hope to change the bad law later?

Most people don't understand how badly F'ed up current taxation of poker is!

I have no problem with withholdings, and I can see that any position of the PPA that sounds reasonible must agree to have provisions so that the Federal and State governements can get their greedy grubby hands on any taxes currently due them under existing law.

But IMO, the PPA should make it clear that existing tax laws on poker make it very easy to create a much higher tax than is justified. You can have a loosing year or even a break-even year and owe a ton of tax under existing laws.

IMO our position should be, we have no problem paying taxes on real income, but strongly oppose paying taxes on phantom income.

If we do not address this issue at the begining, when the tax revenue calculations on lisencing and tax collection are formed, we will be in the position later of facing the arguement that we are "costing the US government money" or creating "tax-breaks" for poker players.

Any deal on regulation, lisencing, etc, is the only time to correct this problem, you wait and it's too late as the projected revenue stream will be spent at least two times over.


D$D

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I hope you'll write to Congress and to the PPA to express that. It sounds like you'll make it clear that you wish to pay your taxes like everyone else, but that our taxes should be the same as everyone else's.

By the way, FoF has repeatedly tried to get the federal deduction for gambling losses eliminated, such that if you win $100,000 and lose $300,000, you may taxes on $100,000 in income. They say the deduction subsidizes an industry that "destroys America's families". [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]