Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Aces 518
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.
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.
Last edited by Lego05; 02-10-2024 at 02:49 AM.