My tax story

[pshabi]

Okay, I just completed my return and I wanna punch someone in the face. I'm only 5'10", 175 lbs so it won't hurt bad. Any takers? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Here's my story:

I'm a teacher/Ahletic Director/Coach. I've been blessed to make $53k this year (my 5th with my school). Pretty good for a gym teacher. My wife busts HER ASS as a manager of a pretty big retail outfit, not to mention raising our two kids. She made about 32k last year.

I started Jan 05 grinding 2/4 full LHE games and progressed to 5/10 near the end of the year. My winrates weren't great, and I don't play a ton, but I did manage to make $8,000 playing poker. That gives us about $93k in income for the year.

First I filed my taxes like I didn't even play poker, taking just the standard $10k deduction. In that circumstance, the gubment would've owed US $3,000.

Filing using the EACH DAY is a session method brought our income up to $123k for the year. After deducting losses, I found we would owe $2,200. Does this mean I'm paying $2200 on an $8,000 gambling win? Just want to make sure I'm thinking clearly.

Out of curiousity, I ran the #s using each TABLE session as a session. I.E. If I played 3 hands at a table and lost $50 and left, that was a session.

In this situation, my reported poker income nearly doubled, although the deductions obviously were proportionately greater. However, doing the math this way, I would've owed the gubment $3700 instad of $2200!!!!!!!!!!

So, it's obviously going to help people to file defining every day as a session.

My biggest disappointment is this: Without poker, I would get 3k back. With poker, I give up $2200. That's a 5k swing. So, in actuality the $8k that I grinded out last year is really only $3k. Kind of kills the hourly!!!!!

This year, I should take in from $25k - $35k making poker, so hopefully the #s wont' be so bad. But for guys like me last year, making less than 10k playing poker, it really is eye-opening.

[pshabi]

Here's what I don't understand:

I've looked at a summary for both ways of defining a session:

The "by day" method yields the exact same amount of "taxable income" as the "by table" method. The Gross income is obviously mucher higher "by table."

If the "taxable income" is exactly the same, then why am I paying more using one method?

[bobbyi]

How are you extracting your sessions, with a day being a "session", and adding up the wins and losses? Is there an easy way to do this using PT or some add-on program? Are you exporting everything to Excel and then using some spreadsheet that adds up sessions per day?

[Uglyowl]

Certain deductions are reduced or eliminated the higher your taxable income.

[pshabi]

I use this "acces" script from the PT forums:

SELECT MONTH(s.session_start) AS SessionMonth, DAY(s.session_start) AS SessionDay, YEAR(s.session_start) AS SessionYear, SUM(amount_won) AS AmountWon
FROM players AS p INNER JOIN [session] AS s ON s.player_id=p.player_id
WHERE p.screen_name='yourPlayerName'
GROUP BY MONTH(s.session_start), DAY(s.session_start), YEAR(s.session_start)
ORDER BY YEAR(s.session_start), MONTH(s.session_start), DAY(s.session_start);



After you run this it gives you a report of day by day activity. I simply sorted it A->Z so the winnings were together and the losses were together. I copy/pasted that to excel to give me quick totals and that was that.

If you have multiple aliases, just include them after the line "WHERE p.screen_name='yourPlayerName'" by adding "or p.screen_name='PShabi'" for each name.

[pshabi]

You're on the right track, but the deduction/exemptions are reduced the higher your "Gross Income" gets. My taxable income was the same calculating either way.

Someone at H&R block just confirmed this.

[ski]

Just OOC how could the government know what your daily +/- is?

[pshabi]

When a few months from now, they call me and say, hey Phil, we're coming to audit you.

Could you get those poker records ready for us?

[alekhine8]

Unfortunately, I think you are on the right track with your taxes.

I don't know all of your facts, but assuming you have no itemized deductions other than gambling losses, you both added net poker income of $8k and lost your standard deduction of $10k. I don't know the tax brackets, but at 28% you are about $5k worse than before which is pretty consistent with your post.

If you are going to file as a non-pro and be forced to itemize your gambling losses, you need to review and make sure you aren't missing any (home ownership, student loans, medical, etc).

[RikaKazak]

[ QUOTE ]
Just OOC how could the government know what your daily +/- is?

[/ QUOTE ]

They don't, but the burden of proof lies on you not them.