tax deductions

[Talking Poker]

I believe it all would, yes. This is exactly right.

Also, everything Kurn posted is exactly right too, and really, really annoying. It's like the IRS would rather force most people to not report their gambling winnings than to report them FAIRLY and pay the taxes on their actual net winnings, without costing themseles additional money they should't owe.

Try defining an online poker "session" sometime and let me know how that works out for you. I personally think it's perfectly reasonable to sum up all your online "sessions" (multi-tabling, etc) for each day of the year and then report the total wins and total losses from those redefined "session." But I'm not an accountant either.

[Kurn]

I understand their logic. It's a holdover from a 100% B&M world where the vast majority of people who went to casinos never reported their winnings either out of ignorance of the law or from the simple logic of "no paper trail".

Since the IRS' job has always been to get the money, they created rules that were punitive to the honest because there was no way to catch the rest.

Couple that with the schizo American culture - obvious freedom combined with a puritanical undertone - and you have a nation with the lowest tax rates of the industrialized world combined with the most Draconian tax enforcement.

Welcome to the monkey house.