Playing professionally and unemployment

[redfisher]

Have you considered just playing as a hobby? Many people on unemployment are degenerate gamblers. If you declare your poker income on your taxes as gambling winnings offset by losses, you will not be considered self-employed and I would think you're fine with the state. You will also not be required to pay self-employment taxes. You will have to itemize deductions to deduct losses and will effectively not be able to deduct the standard deduction, but this is the default way the IRS wants to see gambling winnings/losses.

[ThaHero]

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20/hr playing poker + umemployment = insufficient funds? how does that happen?

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I know people in L.A. that make less than $20 an hour and raise families. I'm baffled someone can't make it in Wisconsin on that.

[DrMega]

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20/hr playing poker + umemployment = insufficient funds? how does that happen?

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I know people in L.A. that make less than $20 an hour and raise families. I'm baffled someone can't make it in Wisconsin on that.

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I should be clearer - unemployment + $20/hour has been enough. $20/hour before taxes (probably $12 or 13 after) would be cutting it close for me. In other words, I need to be saving about $.35 on the dollar to pay (per quarter as I understand it) to the IRS for tax purposes.

I should also be clear that I have only logged about 250 live hours since I started playing seriously so this winrate is varied and unproven to say the least; I've been relying on UE as a backup in case poker doesn't work out (my winning may very well be the positive side of short-term variance).

Thanks for the advice all.