The deal with the 30% withholding rate for int'l players...

[teddyFBI]

So I'm Canadian, and when I cashed last week in an event, the payout people told me that one of two things would happen:

i) If I was an American resident and had a SS#, I would get my entire payout, but they would also issue me a W-2 (and also send one to the IRS, obv).

ii) If I was foreign (which I am: Canada), they would immediately take a 30% cut out of the payout (but that depending on my country's tax treaty, I might be able to get it back by filing some forms with them and what not)

OK, both of the above things I was prepared for, but the more I think about it, the more it feels like something's wrong, and I wanted to run it by a forum where some people might be better informed than I. Here's the problem, as I see it:

There are two ways that this problem manifests itself:

#1 - Let's say I buy in to a WSOP tourney for $1,000, and I make the lowest payout cut for a $1,800 payday. Shouldn't they ONLY take a 30% cut of my WINNINGS? (e.g. $800)??? Because when I sat in the Payouts office, I'm 100% sure she did not deduct the tourney entry fee before calculating the 30% cut. In the example above, this would result in a $540 withholding (30% of $1,800), whereas it seems like they really only should have withheld $240 (30% of $800)-- do I have a legit beef or no?

#2 - I think they really should look at my WSOP in the aggregate, before determining what my winnings are (if any), and only THEN take the 30% cut. For example, let's say I cash in a $1,000 buy-in event for $5,000 (for a $4,000 profit). Let's also say that in the next week, I enter 4 more $1K buy-in tournies but don't cash in any of them. So over the course of that week, I paid $5,000 in entry fees and cashed for $5,000 leaving me with zero net profit. I'm of the opinion that they really shouldn't take a 30% withholding of ANYTHING (where's my profit, after all???). But that's not how they operate: they take a 30% cut of my $5,000 payout, actually leaving me *in the negative*, despite me not having made a dime over that week.

Anyway, what say you about the 2 issues above -- do I have legitimate concerns? And more importantly, where can I go to learn more about just how I can get this $ back from the CDN gov?