Also remember in Canada the CRA is the only area were you are guilty until proven innocent. Very costly to fight them in court.

CRA officers are under extreme pressure when auditing to come up with something. Its also very under staffed

You’re wrong it’s closer to 90%

I should have been more specific. They should obviously have records of where the money came from if the CRA request it. My point was, whether they declared the winnings or not does not actually affect whether it should be taxed.

Here Is what I found

Since the income you use to play poker has already been taxed the winnings are enjoyed strictly as winnings. If your winnings are carried out on a casual poker player and casually wins there is no tax consequences. Easy enough to understand.

It changes if the winnings are derived from business income. When I called Canada Revenue there was actually no black and white answer. There is no example offered to show how winnings from online poker were taxed. (shows how many are claiming lol)

The difference was that winnings would be be taxed when income to play online poker was used from business income that had not yet been taxed. Sounds odd, yes it would mean that your income source would be derived from income that you hadn’t yet been taxed on. These days more and more people are earning income first before paying any tax so as hard as it would be to pinpoint as to how much would be taxable, it is possible. An example of business income would be rental income, royalties, interest earned or even as an athlete. Sounds a little risky but with today’s online forums and poker players skillful knowledge and various software strategies, again it could be possible.

What about a professional gambler? Again this would be hard to determine whether you are a professional gambler. If you spent more than 25- 35 hours online each week playing poker you might find that your new profession is a gambler and your winnings are taxable. My question is where do you draw the line from a casual poker player or a professional poker player and how would Canada Revenue establish a professional to a casual player. After all if one looses they could theoretically claim the losses, just as a business could off set the losses against other sources of income.

Now there is a history of similar case history where a sports bettor was beating (when it first came out) the Pro-line lottery, betting sports for millions, CRA tried to tax him he took them to task and won and paid no taxes.

To make it even more complicated "lottery winnings" are not even governed federally but provincially.

So imo gl and the only ones gonna make any money here are once again the lawyers.


In short just make sure you buyin for money you have already been taxed on

Here is an interesting article from my area in Canada (Vancouver island) where a business sued CRA for targeting them and being malicious

https://www.timescolonist.com/news/l...ple-1.23192407

this is the type of people you will have working on your case if you are audited

I was audited for something in 2005 and sent them proof they were wrong, they sent me 3 more letters requesting more proof which I provided. the 4th letter said their decision was final I owed 4400 dollars, and I was free to hire a lawyer If I wanted to go further. I checked into a lawyer at the time and he wanted 2000 plus an hourly to start. And I had no way of knowing if the lawyer was any good. So I just gave up and ate it and paid the 4400.00. I wish they would try now as I could afford to fight them and am waiting for just such an event. However I doubt they would pick on someone who could afford to fight them.

Honestly the only tax professionals method makes a lot more sense to me. Say you're a guy who likes to play slots but you're not a professional gambler. In America, if you win a 5k jackpot you get a w2g for 5k. What almost everyone (90%+) end up having to do is pay the taxes on that 5k. Even if our hypothetical player was net down for the year on slots lets say 2k.

Unless your logging every session you play AND willing to forfeit the standard deduction which is very high AND willing to itemize ALL your other deductions as well. It's still almost always works in your favor to bite the bullet and pay another 1.5kish in taxes. Despite the fact that you were a net loser on gambling for the year. Which is ****ing insane imo. The gambling tax system in the USA is awful. Making non professionals just not have to worry about it would be much better. Would push recs to gamble much more and not force people to pay extra tax money they shouldn't have to. (paying taxes on jackpots or tournament wins while being a net loser for the year)

They should at least make gambling its own thing for taxes. Like let you take the standard deduction and not itemize deductions for the rest of your taxes. AND then for just gambling you get to itemize your wins and losses to find your net gambling result and pay or not pay as needed.

i cant imagine why someone would willingly pay taxes here in Canada. lol. why ever declare yourself a professional?

primary income? nah ive just been lucky the past 12 years since i started at age 19! lucky lucky GAMBLING!

love the fact i never have given the government a dime, ****ing love it.

ya this is basically the jist of it. no one is claiming because no one has to.

its super grey area and its simply the best. my goal is to never pay tax in my lifetime as i dont believe in it.

It is actually not super grey at all, even if many wish to believe it is. Calling CRA gets mixed results, as the person answering the phone is often times making a best guess at an interpretation, especially if it is somewhat of a rare situation. Ask any accountant with experience and they will tell you the value of calling CRA for a tax clarification on anything with complexity.

Seems you take massive pride in not paying tax, and ok if that is your thing, but of course the irony is depending on how much you actually make - you likely would be better off in many ways properly running it as a business (declaring income, writing off appropriate expenses) than doing what you are doing. Running a routine business for this you would get back $1,000+ a year in HST for your business related expenses (internet, computer components, phone service, portion of your home expenses based on space used for it etc.) that you are bypassing by not filing any business returns.

I have no idea how much you make, nor am I asking, but the above pretty much applies if you are making 35-40K or less a year at the tables (assuming this is your only income, things change if you have a full time job and poker is a secondary income), and if you are consistently making above that then you are taking the risk that you eventually get looked at, at which point your libertarian style views about tax payments will not really work in your favor, but each person can decide the risk return of that choice for themselves, and likely the people mentioned in the OP are re-thinking their choice in that regard.

Wut? Maybe because they don't want to break the law lol? It's pretty clear whether or not you're a professional poker player regardless of what you "declare". And the law in Canada is quite clear that professionals must pay taxes. Best of luck tho.

Interpretation of the law is the purview of judicial system, and they have been quite clear that poker players do not need to pay taxes. And if you are in favour of tax revenue, then you should be happy that is the case, because the last thing you want is for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to be able to declare themselves a semi professional poker player and start writing off their losing river calls.

Ok leach. Let’s just have everyone else pay for everything. What a cool dude

As I said, the irony is that many times these "leaches" end up costing themselves in many ways by being all "I don't pay no stinking taxes!" when their situation, if run properly, would likely mean they still pay little or no taxes, and in fact receive some net benefits instead. They do this while also enjoying being called a leach and adding unneeded risk in case they ever do get looked at (given that scrambling to create years of books after the fact has a much different likely outcome as will probably be discovered by the people mentioned in the OP's article).

Many time these "leaches" are similar to the players in the old bonus whoring era who took great pride in "never making a deposit" to a site, when all that meant was they bypassed a ton of money and benefits, but at least those guys simply lost a lot of potential money for their misplaced ego/beliefs, and did not face any potential risk of investigation.

I think it is great that you have figured out how to live without paying taxes. Well done you.

Please stop using our infrastructure. The infrastructure is paid for collectively by those of us that pay taxes. The infrastructure is not free. If you are not willing to share in the common expense to support the infrastructure, despite having money, then GTFO of my pocket and stop using the services that I am supporting with hard earned dollars. You do not have my permission to use these things that I have paid for if you are not willing to help support them.

If you are consciously avoiding paying taxes, then stop using the roads and highways. Stop using water and electricity. Don't call the Fire Department if you catch on fire, and don't call the Cops if someone punches your lights out (probably a regular occurrence.) You have not paid for these services, even though you have money.

This includes the infrastructure that carries the electricity you use to power your laptop and the street you drive on to get to the casino. Stop using them until you are willing to pay your share. Why should we have to pay your way.

You can keep using the sewers, since we have to put up with enough crap from the likes of you anyway.

He has not actually figured out how to not pay any taxes, even if he wants to believe he is the poster child for that belief structure. He still pays sales tax on his purchases. He still pays property taxes if he owns a property. Thing is, if he is not properly filing, what he is bypassing is receiving credits for many of these and more (including medical costs, child care costs etc).

He is likely costing himself if he is making 40K a year or less at the tables, and if he is some mystical crusher making 500K a year, then good luck to him living in a way that would pass any quick test done by Revenue Canada in case he gets looked at (much as the people in the OP are discovering).

As a bonus for likely costing himself money with his stance, he also gets tagged as a leach and drain on society by others, so I guess a libertarian approach comes with all sorts of bonus benefits in that way .

You mean our horrible roads, terrible health care and equally bad public schools? Hats off to WateryBoil for not giving a dime to the clowns at Parliament Hill.

Horrible roads, terrible health care, you sound like a fox news pundit.

You sound like you don't have an argument.

And you don't sound cdn

I admit I find it interesting that people like you genuinely believe that he and others like him are sticking it to the government by not filing taxes, when again most of them would likely pay little or no taxes, and many would in fact receive net credits back based on their income and living situation.

As to not giving a dime to the clowns, how is he avoiding sales taxes, property taxes, license fees, parking fees, and a whole assortment of other government charges and fees? Is he living completely off the grid, eating the animals he catches with his bare hands (since he would have to pay tax on gloves), while using pirated internet or something? Is he bartering beaver pelts for stuff he needs?

In a way it is nice that so many people have such a simplistic and incorrect idea of how the system works that in the end they cost themselves money, while believing they are winning that battle. All of those people add up to a good amount of unclaimed money not being given to them by the government, so that does help the rest of us, even if that was not the intent of the libertarians, as they attempt to "stick it to the clowns."

As to whether the roads are good or bad - that is a non sequitur comment, since the quality of the roads has no impact on any of the above, but it seems that believing they are bad makes some people happy for some reason, so I guess there is that.

Anyway, unlike others I have literally no issue with wannabe leaches who end up costing themselves money due to their beliefs, though I do find it amusing that they also add an inherent risk of audit to themselves with that choice, as they concurrently cost themselves money. Kind of impressive, but at least they and others can believe they are "sticking it to the clowns!"

All the best.

Did Duhamel not end up paying a significant amount of taxes to CRA when he won WSOP Main ?

“I don’t believe in taxes, so I don’t pay em!” is such an edgelord thing to say. Obviously there are abuses and issues with all taxation systems, nothing is perfect. Especially the gambling taxes in the US.

This discussion has nothing to do with US taxes on gambling oe anything else.

I think he just wanted to find a way to use the word edgelord.