Words from my Accountant...

[CTFIRE]

I took you advise and set fire to all my poker winnings. It all burned up and there is nothing left. Thanks for your help

[yi style]

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k so here is what I did. I dug up every single statement of mine from 2006. I took every deposit that came from my bank and went onto a poker site. I then took every withdrawal that went from the poker site and into my bank. I then balanced them and came up with a net profit. Can I count the withdrawals as my WINS, and my deposits as my LOSSES? not sure if it's worth asking the accountant lol...

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That is what u should do, u cant net them tho, u report the wins and the losses separately, i suggest getting turbo tax if u dont want to pay for a real accountant

keep ur records

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Yes technically this is correct, but since precedents have not been set for poker, many people do net wins and losses.

[yi style]

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Also, you can include expenses such as training site fees and travel in your losses/expenses.

This is not exactly true. You can not include expenses such as traveling ect. unless you are a professional gambler. What you and I would consider a professional gambler may be different than the IRS.

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please...G2k4 is elite poker community

[luckyjimm]

I live in England so don't know [censored] about how your tax system works. But can someone explain to me how it works that you can pay tax on illegally-earned money and be allowed to keep the rest. What do you put on your tax form if you are, say, a crack dealer / arms trader etc?

[muxplust]

g2k4, how much did you lose?

[Avatar of Wine]

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I live in England so don't know [censored] about how your tax system works. But can someone explain to me how it works that you can pay tax on illegally-earned money and be allowed to keep the rest. What do you put on your tax form if you are, say, a crack dealer / arms trader etc?

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Generally, you don't pay taxes on your illegal arms trade - however, you are now evading taxation, giving the government an alternative way to indict.

I'm not sure what the real-world procedure would be if you listed "slinging crack rock" as your occupation, though.

[luckyjimm]

I guess the illegal occupations where you can still pay taxes and not be busted are the kind-of-illegal-but-often-tolerated ones, like whoring, right?


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I live in England so don't know [censored] about how your tax system works. But can someone explain to me how it works that you can pay tax on illegally-earned money and be allowed to keep the rest. What do you put on your tax form if you are, say, a crack dealer / arms trader etc?

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Generally, you don't pay taxes on your illegal arms trade - however, you are now evading taxation, giving the government an alternative way to indict.

I'm not sure what the real-world procedure would be if you listed "slinging crack rock" as your occupation, though.

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[phish]

Let's get back to the real world. Yes, he is supposed to pay taxes on his winnings. But if his situation is that he has a real job (say makes $200K/year) and won about $15K last year playing poker, then his accountant's advice is just realistic real world common sense. Not all accountants need to be anal protect-his-ass type of nit pickers.

He'd probably raise more red flags reporting that income than not. Of course, this is all before the Neteller fiasco. With the prospect of Neteller turning all records over to the Feds, it may be better to play it completely safe.

[SWB]

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I guess the illegal occupations where you can still pay taxes and not be busted are the kind-of-illegal-but-often-tolerated ones, like whoring, right?

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Are you actually required to report an occupation on US tax forms, or just the income? If it works like the Canadian forms - where you report the type of income and the amount, not necessarily the actual job that generated it - then I imagine somebody could list it as "tips", "commissions", or something similarly vague.

[DING-DONG YO]

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Let's get back to the real world. Yes, he is supposed to pay taxes on his winnings. But if his situation is that he has a real job (say makes $200K/year) and won about $15K last year playing poker, then his accountant's advice is just realistic real world common sense. Not all accountants need to be anal protect-his-ass type of nit pickers.

He'd probably raise more red flags reporting that income than not. Of course, this is all before the Neteller fiasco. With the prospect of Neteller turning all records over to the Feds, it may be better to play it completely safe.

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lol, aren't you the guy that said I must be a fairly incompetent CPA after I suggested that someone hold off on paying taxes on funds held in neteller and now you're defending OP's tax preparer for giving him HORRIBLE advice??????

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I question whether ding-dong is really a CPA or some other professional as he's half leading people to believe he is.

This is all fairly obvious. He sounds more like some college student who's latched onto a couple of phrases like 'constructive receipt' and tried to make it into something it isn't, totally oblivious to the main spirit and thrust of every other IRS regulation and ruling.

But he finally did give way a little and changes his argument from one of absolute certainty to one that it is his duty to make such arguments, which, if he truly believes, would the height of irresponsibility to his clients.

If he is truly a CPA, I'd say he's a pretty incompetent one.

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Don't throw stones when you live in a glass house sir.