tax deductions

[melioris]

I have a question for those Americans that pay taxes on your poker winnings. Although I am not filing as a "pro", I am wondering if I can take deductions like it is second business out of my home. All of my playing is done at home. I have a list of things I am wondering if I can deduct, as all are poker costs. -1 at life for the first Canadian that posts "I don't pay taxes on my poker winnings" or something similar.
What I pay for internet?
Fat new monitor?
New keyboard and mouse?
Laptop, if it for poker and other stuff?
Anything else?

[herschelw]

if you're not filing as a pro then no you cant deduct anything. If you are filing as a pro then some of that may be deductable.

[MAYHEM45]

"I don't pay taxes on my poker winnings"

[Robbie Robb]

LOL. I didn't even see the part in mel's post. I was just gonna say "oh oh, mayhem's account has been hacked by a certain wascley wabbit"

[Kurn]

Get an accountant. There are a lot of issues around filing as a professional gambler. The IRS has a history of treating gambling differently than other home businesses and denying most people with jobs the right to file as a pro.

If you don't file as a pro, the only thing you can take as an itemized deduction on Scedule A is the total amount of your losing sessions (your winning sessions go as *other income* on Form 1040).

The main issue here is that if you normally do not itemize, you lose your standard deduction which in effect overstates your poker income by approx. $6,000. If you normally do itemize, the main issue is the fact that you cannot net wins-losses means you overstate your AGI which in some cases impacts your ability to contribute to a Roth IRA *and* potentially introduces the specter of the evil "Alternative Minimum Tax."

But, even though I got an A in Tax Accounting in Grad School, I am neither an accountant, nor do I play one on TV. I didn't even sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

[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.