Live in Seattle and play online poker?

[fnurt]

The basic point is that if you keep money in an offshore bank account, and you only claim the profits in the account as income if and when you transfer them into a US bank account, that's pretty classic tax evasion. People understand this point if they have an account in the Cayman Islands, but somehow, they think it's different if the account in question is hosted at an online poker site.

Whether you really have income at each and every online poker session is a question more metaphysical than I care to get into. But if you run your PokerStars account up to $50,000, and you decide not to withdraw the funds into your bank account until after January 1 so you don't have to claim the income until next year's taxes, yeah, that's tax evasion. The money is income when you earn it, not when you move it from one account to another.