The house always wins. One push of a button may result in a win, but just like the spin before it, and the one to come after, that one push had a -EV, losing expectation.

Gambling wins should be treated just like rebates. Rebates are tax free, they are viewed in the tax law as merely reducing the purchase price of an item. Slot machines and other forms of gambling are the same - the occasional big win (rebate) is needed to provide any sort of enjoyment for this expensive hobby.

Put another way, the house edge / expected loss of a game without considering the jackpots may be 50%. At any time, a jackpot may hit, offering a 45% rebate to reduce the overall house edge to 5%. This jackpot may come early or late, the rebate and house edge are still the same.

Gamblers are purchasing entertainment, the cost of which is reflected by the house edge or rake of that particular game. The tax law places an undue burden on individuals already paying a high price for their chosen form of recreation.

The federal and state laws should be reformed to only tax the entities that are charging a fee to provide the entertainment for their guests. The tax could be progressive, higher house edges could result in higher taxes for the entities.

Example rates:



The house always wins - why are players subject to any taxation at all? Why do so many gamblers accept being essentially screwed over by the us govt? Are there any recreational gambler lobbyists or organizations that are attempting to overhaul the tax code to level the playing field?

I assume the reason is because it would be too easy for people to money launder and pay nothing by claiming they're a gambler.
Additionally, this gives money launderer's an opportunity to pay the government to clean their money. This is just speculation of course, but it makes sense.

the reason is simply bc the gov't wants your money. this isn't rocket science.

Winner, winner!

Think about OP; why are capital gains taxed? I take my after tax income and buy shares of X company, why do I have a tax burden if the shares of X go up, I sell and make a profit? Government needs revenues, simple as that. If you think taxing gambling income is so outrageous, study regulated gaming jurisdictions, you'd be shocked what percentage straight off the top the government takes off things like table revenues.

wtf that's exactly what I said, GIMMI MY CREDIT tyty

I think the idea is many people that hit jackpots are probably up on the year and should be taxed, and most people that don't hit jackpots won't get a form and thus are 99.9% likely to not pay any taxes. It's hard to think of hitting a 1M lottery ticket and think of it as a "rebate". Further, a tax on jackpots should theoretically give disincentive to gambling, and I'm mostly okay with that on a societal level where taxes are used to shape behavior, but obviously not a personal level.

Look at the w2g requirements:

Taxes generally do not work well as a disincentive. In fact, as a disincentive, taxes probably work just as good (that is to say not very good at all) as prohibition. If taxes were truly an efficient disincentive, cigarette smoking wouldn't be a thing as they are generally taxed quite a bit. Sometimes when a government decides to regulate and tax a specific thing/industry, they are basically conceding that "we can't get rid of it, so we might as well profit from it" (think legalizing pot, reversing alcohol prohibition, etc.).

US will try to tax everything it possibly can

Yea UK or Canada and your free from those shackles.

The US govt is a spew monkey when it comes to money and cuz of that they tax the **** out of everything. The US govt is dumb as **** tho, they wage a war on their own citizens over drugs and at the same time undermine that entire thing by using the drug war was as a secret war chest by pushing drugs into the country with the CIA. The entire organization is ******ed from top to bottom.

Don't try to make sense of it, popularity contest winners are running **** lol.

They should be if losses are not deductible from your taxable income.

.

The tax man in america is so bad, they even tax canadians for playing poker tournaments..... Dont they???????????? I mean when they play in america....

<-------Mr. Baxter says hello.

This is for another thread probably but the United States is nothing more than a corporation that has the military and police hired to protect its interests.

don't steal the government hates competition

You don't really know what you're talking about. Pretty much everyone agrees that taxation of cigarettes is the #1 way to curb cigarette use.

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/...4-eng.pdf?ua=1

https://www.healthline.com/health-ne...ting-smoking#1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...75e_story.html

https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2016/15_0409.htm

Obviously the taxes serve as both a disincentive to play (the general public thinks "gambling is bad") and a revenue source for the government. As to why the taxes are levied on players instead of casinos, ask Adelson and his friends in government.

Because we have clueless sheep that make all the laws.

But...but....but....the government is good. We need to give the government lots of money so they can fix all our problems and make sure nobody ever gets treated unfairly. Only 1%ers or racist nazi's would complain about paying taxes to the government.


/s

Your live cash winnings are practically tax-free (you can pay whatever you declare). You pay no instant tourney tax but when you hit an above 5k win (maybe less in some states) and the rest is up to details. The other gambling wins also follow or don't follow the same pattern; a big gambling win, no tax mandatory? But a big jackpot win is like a big tourney win?

It helps the companies when they are not taxed as heavily and that lowers the rake and more players win. It is a reasonable cutoff to tax the big winners, making it easy to tax what can be considered income. The MTTs' juice is rather low compared to the cash rake (and is an issue mostly at the lowest high limits online).

In the USA, one can more or less form a company/trade also as a player and possibly deduct loses.

The gambling tax for fun players is a bug when they can't deduct loses but of tourneys during the same year or so. This is why one is not a pro in many countries during many years if even then but if one declares one to be so. But no one should, as it knows taxes; one can declare other-incomes (won with luck) or not declare at all when it isn't mandatory (if one can prove the source of the money if it comes to that).

The rest of the world pays tax in the US when winning there big enough in MTTs (in tourneys) but they get it back (into their bank accounts) if they go through the paperwork before winning or so. We/you can't deduct it if it is lost in cash games or other gambling if not a company/business/trade/pro and even there it is hard to impossible to support with evidence.

In Europe, we have many kinds of laws here and there is no common line and we pay from zero to double tax (higher rake and taxes of winnings).

The taxes are generally paid by the companies when the winnings are tax-free and as so it is an indirect way of paying a tax on gambling winnings as the players pay more or less of the bills.

The national sites make it difficult to impossible to avoid the tax when there is one or two.

Play in an Indian online site and you pay a triple tax (high rake, tax to India and tax to your country of the remaining). In Asian (grey) sites, one generally pays no tax and the rake isn't necessarily high.

In Spain, winning in a tourney (whatever amount; they had some 5k there in the past but online players pay tax of all winnings), they might send the international player a tax bill but can't get it if one has declared it in one's no-double-tax deal country; technically, even if tax-free.

Unfortunately no, "pretty much everyone" does not agree that taxes will eliminate cigarette smoking. If you believe the WHO math that a 10% price increase will lead to a 4% reduction in consumption, then why hasn't the government simply imposed a tax causing the price of cigarettes to increase by 250%? Based on WHO math that should lead to a 100% reduction in cigarette consumption. I will concede that a 250% price increase would lead to some level of reduction in consumption. However, I believe most economists will agree that such a high level of tax would simply create a larger black market for cigarettes. Therefore, no level of cigarette taxation will ever completely eliminate cigarette addiction. People will simply switch over to the black market (as they did during prohibition). And don't kid yourself for one second, in a world where cigarettes are very cheap to produce (which they are), organized crime will easily supply black market cigarettes if/when taxes on cigarettes become very high. If you believe everything the WHO says, it is the WHO itself that categorizes addiction as a disease. Hate to break it to you, taxing people with a disease will not necessarily eliminate a disease - if it were that simple, we would've eliminated most diseases by now.

How very insightful of you to post that nugget of wisdom.

pretty much any way that can cause you to have more $ then you started with in US is taxable income. Otherwise every untracked source of income would magically start being funneled through gambling winnings (w/e isnt taxed). I'm kinda shocked UK and other countries don't tax gambling winnings and there isn't more issues with fraud.

Because it is income. It's as simple as that. A better question would be why shouldn't it be taxable? Why would you argue that some schmuck who works for WalMart 40 hours week should have his income taxed, but another putz who makes the same amount of income playing poker for 40 hours a week shouldn't?

That makes no sense. Income is income; it shouldn't matter if it is paid to you as a salary by a corporation or whether you earn it in a casino. Hell, even if you rob a bank or get your income from some other illicit means such as dealing drugs, that income is taxable and needs to be reported to the IRS. If you want to know what happens when you don't report such income, Google Al Capone.