What the hell is wrong with you people. Poker winnings have alway been taxable. All they have done is require withhoing similar to what they require for wages. Keep records and pay on you net winnings and get credit for anything withheld.

i cant believe no1 quoted and lold at this.

From the perspective of the US governement this is a completely legitimate request, any prepared tax paying poker player is 100% prepared for a situation such as this. What is the rational for having a large sum of money of which a large % is going to uncle sam, yeah they get our interest but thats not their primary reason for the witholding... YOU ARE A GAMBLER AND YOU'RE GONNA LOSE IT BACK!!!

Most of us that are following the tax law are making quarterly tax payments anyways, this is just another mechanism of those quarterlies.

Nevermind the fact that there are some people that win tournaments for 1 mil+ then go broke by april and can't pay their taxes. So worst case you don't go broke and have a much smaller tax burden, best case tax return = ROBUSTO!

The major issue with this is that it stems as a result of defining tournament poker as a game of luck. So just as Billy Baxter went to bat in 1986 to create the IRS recognized career of professional gambler, someone needs to go to bat for us now (PPA,WPA,WPT,ect) and get poker included in other card and board game based skill game.

Easier said than done

Fossilman where are you.

If you win $1 million and then lose it all back gambling, you should have no tax liability, because you can deduct gambling losses from gambling winnings.

I actually think it is reasonable for the IRS to withhold some of a person's gambling winnings. But I think it is unreasonable for a casino to report that you won money that you actually did not win (as they do in many circumstances in tournament chops).

Oh, really? Why don't you read how the US Tax Code is enacted, and then report back to me.

It actually doesn't really have anything to do with Congress.

This change is the result of a regulation, not a change in the tax code.

Tax regulations are passed by the IRS, which is an executive agency. The Commissioner of the IRS and other employees of the agency are appointed by the president.

If Congress doesn't like a regulation that the IRS has promulgated, they can change the tax code to override it. The Court could also rule that the regulation is not a reasonable interpretation of the code. But as it is, this change was the result of executive branch action alone.

What Mike said was sort of true. If you are paid in tourney chips, your tax burden did not begin until you redeemed the chips for cash.

In years past you could win 1-2 million in chips and lock em away in your box and not pay taxes until those chips are cashed.

Although I've heard this said by some of the top known tournament pros, this is absolutely, positively dead wrong. While keeping income in places other than your bank account may help you illegally evade taxes, it does not change your tax liability, which is due whenever the income is earned.

It is actually a Revenue Procedure, which is lower on the totem pole than a regulation promulgated than the IRS. It is basically a statement by the IRS regarding their belief as to what the law requires, and no one is under any legal obligation to follow it, although obviously not following it is risky.

This particular Revenue Procedure is the IRS's position with respect to an existing law, a law with which the casinos are very familiar, and a law which the casinos had previously determined, obviously upon the advice of their attorneys, did not apply to poker tournaments. Perhaps these casinos will continue to follow their previous interpretation of the law, or challenge the Revenue Procedure as not being an accurate interpretation of the law, or they will just throw in the towel and start withholding.

Wow Schundler, a pair of smackdowns for your birthday. How thoughtful of us...I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, the #1 reason why people should care who gets elected President is the sheer amount of what people commonly understand to be The Law that Congress does not make. Sure, Congress handles the broad strokes, but the actual nuts and bolts implementation falls to executive agencies ("executing" the legislative enactment, if you will). It has been thus since FDR.

And this explains why pretty much every agency ruling in the past few years has tended towards pro-business, anti-conservation and so on, because the people appointed to administer these agencies have been put there by an executive who is pro-business and so on. (Note that this isn't a value judgment, though you can probably guess what I think of it, it's merely an explanation of how it does, and should work - it's just that the electorate as a whole has a fuzzy understanding of what their vote actually means in terms of these things.)

/soapbox.

Welcome to the real world. Anybody in a situation where income varies from year to year (investor/trader, commission salesman, etc) will often be in this situation. If you make $200K this year, your withholding and/or estimated quarterly payments for next year's taxes are going to be based on that number--even if you already have a high degree of certainty that you will only make $100K next year.

You end up fronting the money to Uncle Sam, giving the government an interest-free loan, and then have to wait until the following year to file and get a refund. My tax picture is still wildly variable from year to year, owing to the "echo" effects brought on by several one-time events which occurred in the mid-90s. Some years I'm under-withheld, other years over-. I don't like it, but that's the way it is in the US at present.

Is the income earned when you win the tournament or when you cash the chips?

When you win.

Same as it's income when you leave the table up online, not when you cash out.

Well, this isn't entirely true, as they'll now make more money off of the float interest, but yeah, basically it doesnt' affect too much other than the fact that you're no longer taking a quarterly interest free loan from the government equivalent to 25 percent of your tournament win every time you cash in a tournament.

Vote for Ron Paul and get these [censored] Rockefellers/Bushes out of the White House!

it's more like...

government problem: nothing
government solution: steal money from anyone when money changes hands.

I'm glad I'm primarily a cash game player and play most of my donkaments online.

[x]get hit by a bus
[ ]live a nice life
[x]get burned alive
[x]die

Online taxaments to follow next year if any online poker bills get passed in congress. The bad side of legalizing online poker. Might be better to not support PPA anymore lol.

I lol'd

thank god i am canidan

thank you again lol!!!!!

not that it really matters cause i suck at donkments

you suck at life