I apologize in advance if this is not the correct forum for the topic/questions. But alas here is my situation/questions.


I was shocked when I got home yesterday, and checked the mail, and I had gotten a 1099 form from winning '$2700' worth of 'promotions/high hands' while playing at Boston Billiards/Gate City last year.

I don't know how they got my social, and I don't understand why I was taxed on winnings that were never more than 500 dollars.

Did/has anyone else get a 1099 from them? What about anyone who played in any other poker rooms in the area Chasers, Encore etc? Is this standard in all other areas? How would they get my SS if I only gave them my ID?

You haven't been "taxed" on your winnings. At least not yet. Whether you receive a 1099 or a w2g from a casino or poker room, you have a legal obligation to pay taxes on gambling winnings. The only difference between this $2700 and any money you won from just playing the cash games, is that this money has been reported to the IRS.

I'm assuming you are filing as an amateur gambler, and not a professional. In that case, you are supposed to keep a record of each gambling session. Take all the winning sessions, total them up (including this $2700), and enter that on your 1040 as "other income". I believe it is line 1h. Now add up all the losing sessions. This total is an itemizable deduction, though it can not exceed the total of your winning sessions. By this I mean if you won 100 and lost 80, you use those exact numbers. If instead you won 100 and lost 120, then you would enter 100 in both places.

If you are filing as a professional gambler, then you use Schedule C self-employment.

Gee, aren't taxes fun?

I appreciate the quick and sufficient response.

My wife is a CPA and does the taxes so she will be handling this lol. My records of my sessions are in a 'google spreadsheet', is that a good enough record if I was ever asked to show?

Sadly, gambling losses are not an offset to gambling winnings like in any other venture on the planet. You can offset gambling winnings with losses as a deduction, but unless you recently bought a home or have a small business you are probably taking the standard deduction no matter what.

No, you don't need to do all that. All you need to do is add the 1099 to your total income for 2023, that's all. It just gets added to whatever you made for the year as "other income" and then you file as usual.

I think OP is also asking why this income was reported, not just what his obligation is.

I suggest posting in the Venues & Communities forum to see if anyone else received a 1099. (I did not receive anything from Encore, but I am not high-volume or -stakes and did not win any promotions.)

I agree, in the states I play in each win needs to be over $600, cumulative wins don't count. I wonder if Mass is different, so this can also be asked in the EBH thread https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...aq-op-1746097/

If you are able to itemize, and have offsetting losses, it seems silly to do what you say and pay taxes on the 1099 amount instead of doing what Greg said and not.

The cumulative winnings is tricky in some places .. and I wouldn't put it by some properties not really knowing the rules as well. It's not like scratch offs or a slot machine where each event stands on it's own. $500 HH are the sweet spot .. my local casino basically has a new Promo every month or so and all those $500 events slide under the radar since they fall under different licenses.

If you win multiple Promo events under the same Promo 'game' you could get all of those combined and submitted as a whole. Some casinos change their Promo 'event' every 1-2 months and each one of those falls under it's own language.

If you win multiple 'reportable' events during the course of the year then they can combine those on one 1099 as well regardless of Promo Event license .. sometimes you get a detail, sometimes you don't.

A BBJ portion and a HH win should definitely fall under different Promo Event license, but those also could be combined on a 1099 by some properties.


The SSN issue is interesting .. typically you need to fill out a form even if the event is less than $600. Gaming typically requires this and I've got the pink slips to prove it during the course of the year. Obv you didn't give them a SSN when you signed up for a Rewards Program, but you would have to have given it to them for something at some point in time. Slot, Pit or Poker .. or perhaps if you have a credit line (or even applied for one) your SSN is attached to that for sure. GL

You can but it's not as easy as everyone thinks, you can't just put down "I lost x amount this year", they require a lot of documentation and proof of your losses, not just a spread sheet.
The win/loss statements the casinos provide don't include winnings or losses from Poker so check with your accountant to see exactly what's required to prove your losses. When I used to play with Jamie Gold he was telling me once how hard it was to do this.

In 6 years filing as an amateur, and 24 years filing as a pro, I've never once been asked to provide any documentation at all. And I was told that a hand-written log book (way back when) was sufficient. A spreadsheet should be fine, IMO. How else are you supposed to document your losing sessions? It's not like he necessarily has to go to the ATM at the casino every session. Or to have stopped at the bank on the way. However, I'm not a CPA, or a tax attorney, so take my advice (and the advice of anybody who posted) with a huge grain of salt.

To receive a 1099 you must have received over $600 in promotional or prize money (i.e. high hand or bad beat payouts) through out the year. This is different than winnings from poker which is up to you to report.

The $600 is the total for the year so if you received payouts of $100, $400, and $400 you would get a 1099 for $900.

It depends on on the amounts and other possible deductions. If he itemizes his deductions (which he has to do to be able to deduct gambling losses), then he cannot take the standard deduction. If the standard deduction is more than what his itemized deductions would be with the gambling losses included, then it makes more sense to take the standard deduction and not be able to deduct the gambling losses, even though that would mean he'd pay taxes on gambling winnings without subtracting the losses. And, of course, if he would take the standard deduction, but for the fact that gambling losses make his itemized deductions more, then it is better to itemize, but his taxes will be higher than if he never gambled at all and could have taken the standard deduction, even if he won little or even lost money gambling.

And as to another part of the conversation here: I filed many years as an amateur player with 5 figure net winnings and I never got asked for any documentation. And, if I ever would get asked for it, pretty much all I had was a spreadsheet. Obviously having better substantiation somehow would be nice, but an accurately kept spreadsheet meets the requirements. Of course, if they think your spreadsheet is fraudulent, then that will be another thing. [EDIT: To be clear, I never included the spreadsheet with tax returns. I just put the numbers down on the returns. I was never asked for anything. I had the spreadsheet if I was ever asked for anything, but I never was. I did hear some stories for some people where it wasn't the same, but those were very rare. I remember one though where someone got audited and the auditor I guess found out that all hands got written into a text format and saved. This guy was a professional player and one who did a ridiculous volume. I can't remember the number really, but it was something ridiculous (maybe like 6 million hands that year). He tried to talk the auditor out of it and to take a PokerTracker database, but nope; the auditor wanted a hard copy of the notepad text version of every hand history. So he delivered one giant haul of boxes to the auditor's office and said that was delivery 1, maybe like 20% of the total. As I recall, he did not have to deliver the other 80%. I could be well off on the specific numbers. Maybe someone could find this searching on these forums, but it was a while ago (and not typical).]

I'd be concerned about how they got the SSN though. I assume the original poster must have given it to them and just forgot about it. I mean, that has to be it. But if it were me and I was adamant that wasn't it, that is the interesting part.

All of course accurate and a more detailed and in-depth version of what I meant by "if he's able to itemize" ha.

Gambling income tax law is such abhorrent garbage. Literally no human would agree that if a person goes to the casino 20 times, wins $500 10 times and loses $500 10 times, that should be $5,000 in income, yet here we are.

Is there a form or a way to pay taxes on tournament winnings at the time of the winnings rather than waiting for the 1099?

You can't "pay" them in advance, the taxes they take out after you win a tournament or promotion (whether it's voluntary or involuntary) is just an estimated withholding amount. You still have to finalize it when you do your taxes at the end of the year, and the amount you paid when you won the tournament will be credited to the total amount you owe when all's said and done at the end of the year.

Any funds withheld for Fed/State/Local taxes should be noted on your 1099 and you will get credit for them when you file your returns. If you didn't win the tournament in your 'home' state then you may be required to file a return for that state. I don't believe that Nevada taxes gambling winnings or may not even have a State Tax at all.
Typically you won't get double taxed but there may be some 'home' states that might clip you somehow even though you were out of the area at the time. Florida is another friendly state as well from what I can remember.

You also have the option 'at any time' to file a voluntary tax deposit to the Feds or State. It's really pretty easy to go online and/or use a coupon to mail in a deposit.

Typically the Feds wont' penalize someone who has underpaid as long as it's an unusual event IN THE FIRST YEAR AND you have paid in as much as you owed the previous year via other means.

You may also be able to dictate what is withheld at the tournament via the W4/other form you fill out.

There was another thread on this site where I believe you could prevent them from withholding any taxes as long as you had your actual Social Security Card with you, but you may have to really convince them of that.

It's also complicated if you are from a different country .. especially Canada, where I think as much as 40% is taken out up front and them you have to wait to get it back.

Just make sure you look into both Fed and State(s) requirements before early January .. which is the deadline for making 4th quarter voluntary deposits to cover income taxes. GL

The reason I switched from filing as an amateur to filing as a pro was the way the state of CT handles taxes. Like most states, they start by having you take your adjusted gross income from your Federal 1040. If you file as an amateur gambler, this number includes ALL of your winning sessions, and none of your losing sessions. They then make adjustments for a variety of things that are unrelated to gambling. Now the kicker. CT doesn't have any itemizing of anything at all. Thus, you end up paying taxes on all of your wins, and NEVER have a chance to account for any of your losses at all.

In CT, you could go to the casino twice. Lose $10M the first time, and win $1M the second time. You are in the hole for $9M, and yet you would end up paying them about $40,000 in extra income tax! Effing ridiculous.

Not really possible because you don't know what your effective tax rate even will be. If you are uber rich, you could assume tax rate equals max marginal rate, but do/will you need to pay SEP? penalties? other?

Not going to go into all the boring for some (but not all of us) details but it is a little more complicated that paying as much as last year. First it can be 110% of last years taxes if you are above a certain income. (I may be wrong on the 110% but it is over 100%). Second, that 100% or 110% must be paid via "withholding". Withholding (as in taken directly and you never actually saw it) is always considered "timely". If the 100% were met via estimated payments, they need to be equal for all quarters (generally, not really that simple) OR you must annualize to show that payments were timely. But regardless, estimated payments do not count toward the 100% safe harbor rules.

Note there are other safe harbor rules for this issue.

This or similar reasoning is becoming more common. Since like CT does taxes, MAGI starts from AGI so a professional gambler has a taxing advantage since losses are on Sched C which feeds into AGI. One example of this is ACA subsidies (PTC's). If your MAGI is higher you get less subsidy.

OTOH, if you are a crappy professional and thus your AGI is super low, you could lose all ACA PTC. In some states this forces you onto Medicaid but in some (FL I believe is one) an income too low forces you off subsidized ACA (federal regs) but since the state doesn't have expanded Medicaid (state regs), you (likely) don't qualify for Medicaid.

Are you sure about the bolded?

I can't imagine they don't .. what if a person 'only' submits via quarterly payments?

Unfortunately in today's AI-type world .. a computer could kick out a letter from the IRS. I can't say from exact personal experience, but I've had a few people go through it when they started to work as contractors and/or had non-standard life events occur and got caught off guard at filing time. All of them paid in full with the return and most of them received a 'warning' type letter with their 'new' quarterly payment coupons 'suggesting' that they do better next year.

With a tax code as thick as the one we work from it's easy to imagine that even the slightest difference in situation may change how the return is handled upon filing.

Certainly it's not a 100% 'pass' to make a conscious decision to wait until you file. I would certainly suggest making a 4th quarter deposit in January since you're going to be filing 'soon' anyway. 1099 don't have dates on them .. they don't know when you won your tournament or jackpot, just that it occurred in the calendar year.

All I'm suggesting here is to NOT panic or stress about it .. get a 10% payment in there or 'something' so they know you made an attempt 'in the 1st year' of a spot that may or may not be reoccurring. GL

Let me rephrase a little, estimated payments do not count toward safe harbor when WITHHOLDING is stated. Withholding is always considered timely regardless of when it is withheld. Estimated payments are expected to be "equal" across the 4 qtrs but are never considered withholding.

If the income is lumpy (as would be expected in live tournament play) then you can pay your estimated taxes as the lumpy income is earned BUT there is an extra form (2210) to include. This can be easy or moderately complicated depending on specifics.

So yes estimated payments can be included but they need to generally be equal across the 4 qtrs. But you could in theory have all of the $ needed to reach a safe harbor from your last "check" and still have no penalties.,

The issue with making a big estimated payment in Q4 (which IIRC is due by Jan 15-ish) is that it will not be considered timely. You could even over pay to the point you are due a large refund due to overpayment and still owe a penalty.

You can get around this with form 2210. This can be relatively easy to fairly complicated. IMO, if you need to file a 2210, especially if this is a first time, you probably want to involve a competent tax preparer.