No, I meant a majority of pros win over time, or they would be very poor. A majority of everyone else loses. Than how do you tax online compared to love, tournament compared to cash ect.

Go do your taxes

Right so this is an argument for taxation.

As for your comment that I should go pay my taxes your reading comprehension is apparently low.

Even after the recent Radonjic case? Of course the CRA proved themselves to be less than competent in that case, but given what the judge had to say, it seems like they will have a very difficult time winning a case in the future (regardless of competence). Interested to hear your thoughts on this.

The law is 100% clear. The problem is CRA fails to present their case properly and a judiciary that doesn't understand probability.

For law school admission there is no differentiation based on degree. So a student with a PoliSci degree or sociology competes on par with someone with a physics or mathematics degree. The result is that law schools are for the most part full of ******s who then go on to be judges.

I don't expect CRA to become competent and I don't expect judges to understand probability so I'd expect there to be no crack down on gambling income but that doesn't change the fact that the law is absolutely clear on this matter.

for those thinking I am a troll.. I am not. Almost every successful poker pro in the area of Quebec City has been contacted by the CRA. A very successful one has been in a fight with them for more than 3 years, he's gonna win his case but pay 50k+ in lawyers. Think he's going after the government after. Recently they started going after more people. Link between all these guys is they own a house or condo and live in Quebec City or suburbs.

It is weird though because no one has gone to court yet, even if some of them have been contacted the first time 2 years ago. It's like they try to bully them so they pay and if they lawyer up and don't well they were freerolling anyways.

Thanks for elaborating.

It's interesting that the CRA seems to be focusing on players in Quebec. Can someone please explain why a federal agency would take a more aggressive approach in one province than they would in other provinces?

CRA does not collect taxes in Quebec so they would not have contacted anyone.

If people have been contacted then it was from Revenue Quebec.

Thats wrong

I been contacted by cra and not revenue quebec

Possibly -- I don't really understand Quebec's relation with federal tax collection but Quebec administers their own income tax so if the only people being contacted are in Quebec that has to be the reason.

I remember years ago 2eazy said when he filed he also submitted a letter or form or something saying something like "I won X at poker but its not taxable"

Could explain why he was targeted.

True, I remember that as well. But the fact that there are numerous other concurrent cases happening in Quebec suggests that something else is going on IMO.

Well i wasnt contacted specifically about poker. I was contacted 8 months ago for a audit, They asked me a bunch of questions about poker. I havent heard back for about 8 months now, i still in the process of getting audited. I have told the goverment every year since i started playing about my poker wins.

I dont believe this to be the case . Its mostly a lot of these players have a high networth/income ratio that triggers the audits

High net worth / income would not explain why only Quebec. Obviously there are people outside Quebec who also match the criteria. It has to be either because of something from Revenue Quebec being the trigger or something else the group has in common.

Whatever it is it is. As long as people did not actively engage in hiding the income then it was a freeroll to not pay

i dont think its something specifically in quebec i was never once contacted by revenue quebec. I have no reason to believe quebec players are being targeted specifically.

Thanks, I take back what I said about the trolling. Thanks for elaborating!

Anyone know how long into the past banks keep records and or CRA could viably get accurate statements 3 years? 7, 10, forever? I'd assume a long time but I can only access a few years online.

A friend of mine had not filed income tax since 2000 and was recently required to file 2003 to present (but not 2001 or 2002) which makes me think ten year limit for CRA going back.

He had income with no T4s from 2003 which he needed bank statements to calculate and the bank had them even though on their website they claim to only keep records for 7 years. So at least TD has records for 10 years ago -- maybe longer.

Well if this gets serious we should pool money to fight it. There are honestly so many negative implecations from poker people don't realize that personally I think it should not be taxed. Coming from a biased perspective.

On a side note, anyone think this thread is counter productive in that any decent crown lawyer would come across it?

Lastly, henry big question, you are very knowledgable and contributive, but dont come across as someone that plays, so i'm wondering in what benefit you achieve from this thread. Just curious, you seem very informed and educated on said maters

I am not sure if there is even a "this" to speak of. The original claims seems to have been watered down from CRA is contacting a significant number of poker pros in Quebec to 2 or 3 people got contacted.

Self-interest is a terrible thing to base tax policy on. Tax policy has to be based on first principles. Long time since I've given it any thought but I would say taxing professional gambling income is justified if taxation is justified. The second part is what allows me to not pay taxes.

As for fighting "this" there is nothing to fight. The law is absolutely clear. The only reason case outcomes don't match what the law requires is a mathematically challenged judiciary and that public servants are generally idiots. This is not something that can be won on a macro level. Spending money will allow individuals to win individual cases but the only way to change this across the board would be to change the tax code.

If I was going to spend money on this it would be to try to find a way to create a structure to making gambling income tax free. I'm not sure if that is possible but it has a better chance of success. I used to think about stuff like that but then I got distracted by trying to think about ways to exploit the TFSA.

Involvement in this topic would make an argument that lack of declaring the poker income as income was based on honest mistake harder but not in a significant way.

I used to play live poker but never really managed to transition to online nor keep up with changes in the game. Poker is not the only form of gambling where you can have an advantage and be profitable -- so while this discussion may be about the taxation of poker winnings it would be of interest to any person who gambles significantly in Canada.

Further, I have an LLB and I've been around gambling my entire adult life. This topic is going to come up and given there are at most a dozen significant cases it isn't a complicated subject to be knowledgeable on.

Lastly, you don't need to personally benefit from a subject to be an expert on it. I'm probably the most knowledgeable person on the Amanda Kn.ox trial and when we ran a script on the OOT discussion I'd written over 1/2 million words on the subject. I don't know the victim, the killers, or anyone associated with the murder trial nor do I have any interest in ever having a roommate let alone stabbing one.

Personally, I think all gambling winnings should be taxed and I'm not sure what's stopping them from making it happen, I can't imagine it would cost them that many votes.

I would allow a little room for small time gamblers to win and lose for entertainment, say anything under $5 or $10k is still tax free but for everything above that I would copy the American system.

We tax income and windfalls are not income. To justify taxing a source you have to also accept the losses from that source so making gambling wins taxable would mean making gambling losses a reduction in income and that isn't something the government wants. Taking winnings without allowing losses to be a reduction would be illegitimate.

If someone walks into a casino and puts $100,000 on a number in roulette and wins he should not be taxed. That is not income -- same applies to winning the lottery, fluking out and winning a major poker tournament, etc.

If the person uses skill to have an advantage then they should be taxed. If someone can clock the wheel, card count, employ rhythmic rolling, etc then they should be taxed because that is a business venture.

As such Canada has it perfectly right. The problem is that having this distinction creates a definition issue in the middle. Both extremes are easy to identify but in the middle there are a lot of people who it is hard to say which side of the line they fall on. This confusion is then made bigger but CRA sucking at their job and judges not understanding fairly basic math.

I understand thats how it works but it doesn't have to, and many countries tax windfalls without allowing people to also claim losses from gambling. I remember reading about an interpretation from one country that each winning session is taxable and in that country the winning sessions don't even get offset by losing sessions. So if you win $100 one day and lose $100 the next day you owe taxes on $100.

It just occurs to me that this would be an easy way for the government to raise taxes without ruffling too many feathers. I would think most of the feathers ruffled would be the people taking advantage of the gray area, don't think anybody else would care that much.

Governments can make policy the is illegitimate. Countries that behave that way have tax policy that can not be legitimized. They have given up on pretending the tax policy is informed by first principles and just tax based on whim.

As a source of tax revenue gambling income tax would not even register. The amount of tax revenue the Federal government takes in is north of $600 billion. How many poker pros can there be in Canada -- a few hundred at most with the bulk of that group making under $100k. The amount of money involved is too small to motivate policy change.

isnt this tax evasion? what is the penalty (fines, criminal conviction?)