Pay on withdraws or earnings?

[DING-DONG YO]

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Did the tax guy explain WHY he thought you should only claim withdrawals? Seems like he should be able to provide this to your satisfaction if he wants your business.


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His reasoning was that he doesn't know that the money is yours. He said "what if the site never pays you?" Then you would be out of the tax money because the IRS will never give you your money back.

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I'm surprised that someone who specializes in gambling taxes and works with high profile poker players would give you such an incredibly thin argument. Can you ask him to expand on that reasoning and post his response here?

[SretiCentV]

I don't know about the legal aspect of this, but it seems your question was answered anyways. I just wanted to chime in on how I think that its ridiculous that you would have to pay taxes on the money in your playing bankroll. If you have, lets say 10k in there and pay 3k taxes on it or whatever, then fine, no problem. But lets say you have a crappy year next year and you only manage to get your roll back up to 10k. Now they're going to tax you again on it and steal all you worked for? How are they supposed to draw the line on having taxed you repeatedly, etc. Not that I'm qualified by any means to give advice here but I would only pay taxes on what I withdrew. Thats all they can prove I have and its money I won't lose in a downswing anyways.

[aba20]

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Did the tax guy explain WHY he thought you should only claim withdrawals? Seems like he should be able to provide this to your satisfaction if he wants your business.


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His reasoning was that he doesn't know that the money is yours. He said "what if the site never pays you?" Then you would be out of the tax money because the IRS will never give you your money back.

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Shouldn't a site not paying you, be handled the same as a theft? (itemized deduction, form 4684, etc)

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Ya I looked into this and it should. Unfortunatly I didn't know this at the time.

[ChromePony]

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I don't know about the legal aspect of this, but it seems your question was answered anyways. I just wanted to chime in on how I think that its ridiculous that you would have to pay taxes on the money in your playing bankroll. If you have, lets say 10k in there and pay 3k taxes on it or whatever, then fine, no problem. But lets say you have a crappy year next year and you only manage to get your roll back up to 10k. Now they're going to tax you again on it and steal all you worked for? How are they supposed to draw the line on having taxed you repeatedly, etc. Not that I'm qualified by any means to give advice here but I would only pay taxes on what I withdrew. Thats all they can prove I have and its money I won't lose in a downswing anyways.

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You are only taxed on profits, the same way if you have an average of 10k in your checking account you don't have to pay 3k a year just to let it sit there...that would be silly.

[broiler]

The worst part of this argument is that the position contradicts itself. If you are going to exclude income because of a constructive receipt argument, then you should have no income reported from any site. The fact that you have received withdrawals means that on any date that you made a successful withdrawal, you had sufficient access to your funds in order to report all income from that site.

I would also add that the lack of any reports about people having their withdrawal request refused makes this a very poor argument.

If this person is not willing to give you are written opinion of the position and sign any return that you have prepared in this manner, then I would run very fast. You need to have a copy of his position in order to protect yourself in the event that there are legal remedies needed at a later time.

[MyTurn2Raise]

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(who is it anyway, H&R block or a true professional?)

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He does taxes for many high profile poker players and specializes in gambling taxes.

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ugh...does he actually sign off on your tax returns?
This is a disaster.

[joeker]

As long as the money stays in an offshore ewallet or the poker site it's not income, only when it hits a US Bank account should you worry about reporting and paying taxes.

[wpr101]

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I don't know about the legal aspect of this, but it seems your question was answered anyways. I just wanted to chime in on how I think that its ridiculous that you would have to pay taxes on the money in your playing bankroll. If you have, lets say 10k in there and pay 3k taxes on it or whatever, then fine, no problem. But lets say you have a crappy year next year and you only manage to get your roll back up to 10k. Now they're going to tax you again on it and steal all you worked for? How are they supposed to draw the line on having taxed you repeatedly, etc. Not that I'm qualified by any means to give advice here but I would only pay taxes on what I withdrew. Thats all they can prove I have and its money I won't lose in a downswing anyways.

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I agree it seems crazy. I mean when you have money in the stock market and a stock goes up you don't pay taxes until you cash it out. They are both forms of gambling. Why are they different?

[Sniper]

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As long as the money stays in an offshore ewallet or the poker site it's not income, only when it hits a US Bank account should you worry about reporting and paying taxes.

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On what basis do you make this wildly inaccurate statement?

[N 82 50 24]

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As long as the money stays in an offshore ewallet or the poker site it's not income, only when it hits a US Bank account should you worry about reporting and paying taxes.

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On what basis do you make this wildly inaccurate statement?

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