For the MOST part, it does not affect us. Lottery/gambling winnings are non-taxable here in Canada...unless...(there's ALWAYS an unless)...you declare yourself a professional gambler. That is to say you want to claim losses and other expenses as deductions. Now really, only an absolute dumbass would want to this as far as I can see as there really isn't much benefit in doing so.
If you're someone like JD though that could easily live off your winnings, I would definitely have some type of paper trail/records of winning just in case the taxman do cometh and say, "So Rookette, this is an awfully nice 2.4million dollar condo you have here, and that's a REALLY nice Benz sitting out front, yet according to our records you haven't paid taxes since 2002"
If you can establish that your financial gains were from gambling and not any other source then you should be golden.
As a somewhat off-topic anecdote: Joe Hachem is currently undergoing some scrutiny in Australia. Apparently at issue is whether or not he was considered a 'Professional' player when he won the WSOP. If so, his winnings (all $7.5M of them) would be subject to Australia's professional athlete tax of 41%
. Apparently it appears that the decision will fall his way and declare him a weekend player/amateur at the time of his win (if the decision hasn't been made already), but scary none-the-less.
EDIT: Okay, so I headed over to the CRA website and found this document:
Here's the relevant part of it:
According to it, you MAY be responsible for paying taxes if the CRA determines that you are a 'professional' gambler. Were I to win one big tourney (say the WSOP) I could probably be in the clear and say that it was a 'hobby' and I really didn't have an expectation of winning. However, multiple tourney wins, regular appearances at the FT of WPT/WSOP events would probably raise some eyebrows at the CRA.
I also did some further research and found this quesiton posted at a Canadian-based poker forum and, by and large, the general consensus is that gambling winnings in Canada is one GIANT grey area where the gambler is at the whim of the taxman. The forum gives one example where a player, over 3 years, makes more than his 'job' income the first year, about the same the second year, and about half the third year. It would be unlikely that this person would be considered a 'professional' as his expectation of profit would be very hard to prove.
There's also another link to the 2+2 forums which pretty much says the same thing. Here's the link to that thread. (TP, if having this link to the 2+2 thread is a no-no, please delete it. I only include it as it has a TON of good information in it and I figure EVERYONE knows about 2+2):
The whole thing really seems to boil around the "reasonable expectation of profit" phrase...