Taxes question - what is the definition of a session?

[bigalt]

well for me, i just reported my short and long term losses since I was living in switzerland and didn't want to deal with it.

my point was that there they could pull a number, since they had a record. They have no such number with poker.

[RobDoral]

[ QUOTE ]
Or they might just say that you didn't report your $1.5M income from crack sales last year.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is sort of off topic but can you deduct the crack you smoked yourself? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[iceman5]

Well, in your case, they didnt pull the number out of the air. You didnt give them a purchase price so they assumed it was $0. If you told them you bought it for $100 a share and sold it for $100 a share, thats the number they would have.

[nyc999]

What if you slowly build your bankroll and do not make any withdrawals for a year (obviously a casual player)?

[iceman5]

Youre still required to report your winnings, but the chances of the IRS knowing about them is about 0.1%. Personally I would report it anyway.

[RobDoral]

Yeah, you'll have to report it eventually anyway so don't risk looking like you're hiding money in an overseas account. But you should only have to tax it once. If you won enough in a year to build up to say a $1000 BR you shouldn't have to count that money again the next year if you left it in an account. It's like the cash never left the casino.

[MicroBob]

I am loving these tax threads too.


What if I pay my taxes while standing on my head?

And what if I define a session as every time I played while sitting only my right butt-cheek, and then documented that 40% of my sessions I was playing I was only leaning on my left butt-cheek?

They can't prove that I didn't lean on my left butt-cheek during these times...and I've already proven that it doesn't count as a session...thus I won't have to pay taxes on 40% of my winnings.
Better yet, I can just claim that I won 100% of my poker-income during the 40% of the times that I was only on my left butt-cheek...and since I have decided that doesn't count as a session I don't have to pay any taxes at all.



Seriously people, it's not that hard.
You have taxes. You have to pay them.
Just define a session as one day and you'll be fine.
If you don't have accurate records but still try to pay the appropriate amount in taxes you probably won't be that un-fine.

If you try to do something ridiculous to get away from your tax-obligation and then say, "Well...this session was only 2 minutes. And this session lasted for 19 continuous days" then the IRS will likely be pretty amused, will say, "Nice try MORAN!", and they will slap some kind of penalty on you that will be most unpleasant and could have easily been avoided.

[AAAA]

check with representative Jim Kasper from North Dakota about the definition of a poker session.

If he can get a referendum on the ballot next year to allow the state of North Dakota to run legal online poker from there, he has indicated that he will ask his revenue department to stipulate to IRS that a session of poker in North Dakota is one year in duration. He understood when I pointed out how unfair the existing rulings are for recreational gamblers.

That is the good news. Imagine how many new poker players would feel better about money in a US poker room? Also, there is reason to believe that the state of North Dakota would act as the banker for players' bankrolls and just send the losses and the rake to the poker sites. In other words your bankroll is safely in the hands of a US bank, instead of an offshore poker room.

The bad news is that the existing poker sites are not supporting the measure, but rather are taking a wait and see attitude. This means that they aren't getting the money needed to even get the issue on the ballot in November.

So all of you who moan about taxes, and offshore poker sites being petty dictators, think about what you can do to spread the word.

[RobDoral]

Well wtg Kasper the friendly Rep. Sounds like a heck of an idea to me.

[theRabbit]

Just my thoughts.

I think you advise is good. However..

While I believe reporting on a day by day basis may pass the common sense test, I am unaware that this is settled law. I think by following your advise it's unlikely someone will have serious problems (at least criminally). But that is just my opinion.

However, if you are audited and for what ever reason (ex. disapproves privately of gambling) the auditor doesn't agree, and say, disallows some are all of your losses as itemized deductions, disputing an audit can be a long an expensive battle with a largely autonomous agency that has unlimited time and resources. Once numbers go into the IRS computer they can be difficult to get changed.

Also in at least three cases how you report your sessions could impact on you total tax liability independent of your net winnings.

1) If you don't itemize.
2) Your winnings (not netted and declared as income) can subject you to the dreaded alternative minimum tax.
3) Your income from social security would have been tax free and now becomes taxable even though you have little or no net profit for the year.

There may be others.

I think the problem is that the government has ambivalent feelings about poker and other gambling and its morality, and treats it differently than say stock trading which is really just another form of gambling. (IMHO) This results in what is essentially a hidden added gambling tax.

Also, a large proportion of the 100 million+ people that gamble to not report gabling winnings at all (probably in large part because they don't understand the law) making it unfair to those who try to comply with the law.

Personally, I think it would be fair (and suspect most that read this orum would aggree) to be able to net your wins and losses together before declaring it as income (like stocks). That way as long as you accurately record and report wins and losses (on say a daily basis or what ever is deemed proper) things like the definition of session would not be important and issues like these would not arise.

I could go on but that's enough for now.