well said, i'm leaving America forever soon. I have property here and no tax's to worry about until i make about $10M Net operating losses carried forwards. which might not happen, where am i gouing to make 10M at nowdays in America.?

Everything I know how to do to make $$ is illegal, telemarketing, various type's of direct marketing. I will never do illegal biz as I have too much to lose.

My point is the USA has over regulated everything to the point if your not trading hours for dollars at McDonald's your a criminal.

I totally agree with you. I got arrested for drug charges my first time ever 9 years ago, and have not been able to get a job ever since. I have depleted all of my inheritance money and sold everything I have. I moved back to TX when my Mom was sick and started playing holdem and am a bit of a natural at it.

I was holding my head above water when I used the rent money I collected at my Mom's property until I sold the property and I wish I hadn't. I probably would have been able to keep getting behind on the mortgage and playing catch up when I did win, or my father would have put up the mortgage just because he didn't want me to lose the place.

I never should have based my decision to sell the place on my father's threat not to help me any more, but oh well, should a could a.

Now, I am on my last month before I have my vehicle repossessed by a title loan company, and so I'm thinking of riding a bike to Mexico with my old kitty kat in tow to Mexico. The problem is it's hot down here, and I'm almost a 51 year OLD LADY. Believe me I hate that fact, but I also hate being poor and homeless. Playing poker is much better than doing something illegal, but there is certainly a lot of value that I can see in doing some illegal. Sure beats killing yourself or living outside in an unbearably hot climate.

40 I think you're a little out of touch and a few years to late with your posts. First the way poker was running pre black friday was clearly illegal. Many of the states in country had gambling laws in place let alone at the federal level. I think it widely expected that these sites knew black Friday was only a matter of time. Not to mention Full Tilt was Cleary run by crooks. They didn't have the money to pay out the amount players had in their respective accounts. Basically a Ponzi sceme. Have you head from Howard Lederer much? Watch the Lederer Files on YouTube. Pretty crazy stuff.

Also I think almost every state in the nation has bill in there concrete to allow a poker online. While I agree it suck it happened I think good will come of it. More regulated sites back by large casinos that will be audited to ensure they have the money and will have quick withdrawals. Sure you will have to pay tax, but thats the prize of living in the greatest country in the world.

As for you other ridiculous comments.. it like you haven't read anything in the last 2 years. Housing is up, market is at record highs and the economy is turning the corner.

Go spew you're anti america **** somewhere else.

I've pretty much spent the past 3+ years twiddling my thumbs and cursing our supposed "land of the free" government under my breath.

And I've spent the past 3+ years trying to figure out... WHY? Why can the entire rest of the world play online poker, but we "land of the free" Americans CAN'T?

And I've spent the past 3+ years pondering the IRS and poker... how interesting it is that literally ALL of the money put into the "tournament pot" has already been taxed as income by the IRS... and when the tournament is over and the "pot" money has been divvied up amongst the final table-ists, the IRS steps in yet again to tax that already-taxed money AGAIN.

So on the one hand, I'm upset about it all. And on the other hand, I'm realizing just how rigged the game really is... and I don't mean via RNG random number generators. Nor do I mean just the game of poker. Maybe it has been a good thing, to take three years to step back and ponder what it all means.

I don't think that our tax system is good. Taxes are too high, and some of the rules are hard to understand.

That said, I don't think that the tax system is unfair in the way that you describe. The general concept is that you pay a percentage based on your income. It has nothing to do with how money is moved around, or tournament pots, or who had that money before you when it was already taxed.

The concept is pretty simple. Whether I make 50K playing poker, winning the national scrabble championship or building houses, it's still 50K in income and the tax rate is the same.*

The IRS taxes income, not tournament pots. If a person makes money, they pay income tax. If a business makes money, it pays income tax. It doesn't matter whether that business is Joe's Plumbing or my local charity poker room.

If I make 50K playing poker and my wife makes 50K working for a hospital, it still adds up to 100K in income.

As complicated as some of the rules are (especially for poker players**), the concept is pretty straightforward.

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*There will be some differences between occupations, for example, what business expenses are deductible, but the principle is the same.

**Amateur and professional poker players operate under different IRS rules.

Talk about not seeing the forest for all the trees in it... We live in a glorified ponzi scheme, and people like you enable it and make excuses for it. Well done.

So that's pretty much how my three years have gone... I went from being a naive-about-the-world poker player to someone who now understands the game a lot better. The game we all live in. It's not a zero-sum game.

Man you're clueless. Maybe you show ponder how to get ahead of wasting 3 years pondering the Irs and still not being able to speak intelligently about what's going on.Ok

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Your government didn't really care that there might not be enough money in the pot on poker sites there main concern was they wanted a bigger piece of the cake.
They just don't like the fact that gambling sites can get a gambling license in another country and cut out the fat cats in the white house.They wanted to shut them down and tip them upside down to get what was left for there "recession fund".
The housing market did pick up and it is now declining again.
The US dollar has been on a massive decline over the last year and continues to do so...
Think its your FACTS that need re-addressing!

and what happened to all my money on several sites after here in Spain we suffered a similar disaster, not just the yanks

What's the state of online poker in Spain?

The difference is your wife cant lose $50k the next year at a real job.

If I make $1M playing poker in 2014 and then lose $900k in 2015, Im actually net negative after 2 years, not up $100k.

Gambling income isnt like normal income, and should not be treated the same way. Personally I think for this reason that gambling winnings should not be taxable. Tax the hell out of the casinos if you want, but the rules for how professional gamblers are supposed to file are ridiculous.

The British got gambling taxes right, its just a mess here and makes a lot of US poker players tax cheats - not because these people want to abuse the system, but because the system is broken fundamentally in such a way that we cant win if we play by the rules, especially with tournaments.

Aside from the fact that your edge over an amateur player is extremely marginal 20bb deep, and the fact that the rake scales with the buy in (unlike cash games), the IRS makes being a pro live tournament player virtually impossible for US players.

Your argument makes a lot of sense. Not getting away from taxes, that will never happen. It is an income tax, and AFAIK "income" includes everything, legal and illegal, except:

1. income from tax-free municipal bonds
2. military income earned in a combat zone.

Other occupations are allowed to deduct losses and/or carry them forward, so you have a better argument there.