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Originally Posted by avoidthe9to5
this is a great post imo. +1
Always taking highest EV has really fked over several of my very close friends. Inclusive of some of the best players in LA.
You know, love or hate Limon, he's given this advice for years. If you're sitting on 6 figures of pure cash (or chips), the lost opportunity cost of investing that money can be big. OTOH, then you're thinking about market/tax impacts of realizing gains when you're going to use your roll. It could change your relationship with your BR to have it invested. Still, worst case you decide to not play poker because your passive income is so much that you don't really want or need to play? Not a huge disaster.
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Not if you're playing low enough stakes or a small enough winner. Poor people pay very little in taxes.
Oddly, there's one situation where poker is really bad tax-wise. It could come up more soon, with talk of eliminating deductions and raising the standard. Our house is about paid off. We can't itemize. Poker then becomes this crazy thing where every winning session becomes income and I can't deduct losses. Even if your marginal tax rate is 15%, you play 2 sessions a week and pay taxes on every win, poker gets expensive. Make that a 30-something % marginal tax rate and you might not be able to win, especially in limit games where you win like 51% of your sessions.
Play the thought experiment where most deductions are eliminated with a special carve-out for mortgage interest (trust me, the banking lobby will pull this off). Then you get some $24K standard deduction, but gambling still remains penalized where losses can only be itemized. Does it matter to poker? I assume most rec players just cheat on their taxes. If not, will having a huge tax burden make gambling less popular?