If you have to pay tax, generally it is because you are earning income from the business of playing poker. As such, it would be resonable to assume that general business expense rules apply.

IANAL + TINLA. ALso, it has been several years since I did a detailed review of allowable business expenses.

I think you can deduct poker losses, rake, cost of poker reference books, capital cost allowance for computers, furniture and equipment, utilites, rent, property tax. The list is not exhaustive. Any cost directly associated exclusively with conducting the business of playing poker should be deductable from your winnings for the purpose of determining your business income.

However, please note that for all the items after the first three, you can only deduct that portion which is soley attributable to poker. For instance, if you play on a computer, you can only deduct that portion of the capital cost allowance for the computer which represents the portion of use of the computer that is directly for poker. If, for instance, you surf the web, or send emails from that computer, you cannot claim the complete CCA for the computer.

Consult the CRA Guide for Business Income

Care to elaborate?

Been doing similar numbers a couple years so im sure they are super suspicious, maybe the 5th year ill get caught or 6th perhaps?! Its prolly more than 5k like other poster said, no interest in this line ill stick with what I do.

Sorry.

this is the first ive heard of being allowed to deduct rake... are you sure about that?

Much the same content as the ebook is available here:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1809270

Yes. What is taxable is your net earnings.

Just be sure you don't double deduct it.

Here's an example. Imagine a session with one hand, and no antes or blinds. You start with $100. If you bet $2, and are called 4 ways, the pot is $10 and you have $98 in front of you. You win, so you won a $10 pot. A $1 rake is charged, so $9 is shipped to you. $2 of that was already your money. You now have $107 in front of you. Your net gain was $7 so you are taxed on $7 less related expenses.

You don't pay tax on the $2 bet you recovered, and you don't pay tax on the rake. You pay tax on the amount your bankroll increased.

Then from that you can deduct business expenses, like the portion of your internet connection charges that relate specifically to poker.

If you get rakeback, you have to add that to your income.

oh right of course, thanks for clearing that up DTM

This paper, by Assoc. Prof. Alarie of the UofT Faculty of Law, is more recent than the ebook, I believe. A key quote from his introduction is:

Has anyone read this article:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1509810/

It seems definitive.

There is a new decision from the Tax Court of Canada relating to poker: Cohen v. The Queen, available at http://decision.tcc-cci.gc.ca/en/201...011tcc262.html

The case is about a player who had net losses of $121k in 2006 and tried to deduct these as losses from a source. As I've been explaining repeatedly, the courts are not generally receptive to claims that losses from gambling should be deductible. Consistent with how I would conclude on these facts, the deduction was disallowed on the basis that the taxpayer did not play poker with a reasonable expectation of profit and, hence, was not playing poker as a professional.

Excerpt (but you really should read the whole thing):
"The Appellant was an associate lawyer practicing in a large Toronto law firm. After learning that the decision as to whether to elevate him to a Partner was deferred for another year, for the second consecutive year, in December of 2005, he claims he made the decision to leave the practice of law and to take up poker playing on a full-time basis for the 2006 taxation year. He testified notwithstanding his decision to take up this new career, that he did not resign from his law firm employer but started to avoid taking on new work and pass on his files with the expectation his actions would eventually lead to his termination which occurred on March 24, 2006. Under the terms of his termination letter, agreed to by him when presented, he would be paid, as a severance, his full salary for seven months, until October of 2006. He testified he earned about $200,000 per year as an associate in 2005 which was not disputed by the Respondent although no evidence was submitted of same. He also admitted he did not notify his former employer of his new venture, as his letter of termination required him to do, in an arrangement where he would only be paid 50% of the remaining severance from the time of such new employment, which was defined as including starting a new business in the termination letter agreed to by the Appellant. The Appellant testified his former employer continued to make his monthly payments notwithstanding that he never submitted the monthly letter confirming whether he found new employment or not, which included starting a new business, and that his former employer knew of his activities. The parties disagree as to the interpretation of the requirement in the termination letter discussed above."

"In his Statement of Business Activities filed with his 2006 tax return he reported income from “Gambling” activities of $81,283.30 representing his winnings or cash outs as he termed them as well as expenses totalling $203,274, consisting of purchases of $195,765 and business expenses of $7,509.73, which resulted in him claiming a loss of $121,991.43 from such activity for the year."

The court found that his losses were not deductible because Cohen was not in the business of playing poker professionally:

"With respect to counsel for the Appellant, the nature of the activity here, generally recognized as a gambling activity, is not an activity that I or many courts before me, could find has no personal element. The evidence in fact is that the Appellant was a hobby poker player since age 21 and then, at age 33 or so in 2006, takes the position he was a professional poker player engaged in the full‑time business of playing poker. The whole issue is whether he was still a hobbyist in 2006 notwithstanding his position. There is evidence he was also in the employ of a law firm for the first quarter of 2006, which at the very least suggests there may be some personal element for that period of time, notwithstanding the Appellant’s evidence that he was only winding down the practice in anticipation of being terminated. Moreover, the nature of the activity, whether it be called gambling or poker playing, is in my view generally considered a personal activity with the professional players in a minority. The Appellant himself testified the vast majority of the new players in tournaments were amateurs, suggesting it was advantageous to play them to relieve them of their money which was one of his strategies."

There are lots of other reasons and much more analysis given by the court. This is a must-read.

Not quite sure what the above means.

It means that if you lose money playing poker it is an uphill battle to show that you were playing professionally such that you can use your poker losses to offset other sources of income (e.g., income from salaried employment).

The flip side of this uphill battle in the case of losses suggests that the CRA will have an uphill battle to collect tax from you on your poker winnings at the start of your playing career.

Pretty consistent with what's been said on this thread many times.

Not really.

Really?

Looks consistent to me.

To be able to deduct losses, you have to have established that you are in the business of playing poker. To do so, you must establish that you have a reasonable expectation of profit. That concept dates from close to the very beginning of this thread. (Often this is argued from the other side - you can't be taxed if the CRA can't show you have a reasonable expectation of profit.)

If you have always been a losing player, (if you have no significant history of being a winning player) it will be very hard of establish that you have a reasonable expectation of profit.

The long post by TaxGuru is not saying that you cannot deduct losses from your winnings if it has already been established that you run a poker playing business.

There isn't much new there.

Some clarifications but that is it.

If anything it reinforces that some people can be engaged in the business of poker playing and be taxable, just not this guy.

So the only way they can prove you have an expectation to profit in the future is by looking at your results in the past. That doesn't seem right to me.

Do you have any better ideas?

Most poker players are net losers over their lifetime. Therefore to establish that a particular poker player has a reasonable expectation of profit, some specific evidence must be cited that sets the player apart from the average player in a way that indicates they are not only more likely than an average person to make a proft, they are also more likely to make a profit than not make a profit. A solid winning record is the best way to establish this.

There might be other ways. Having doctoral degrees in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics and statistics, an oustanding reputation as a mindreader in a circus sideshow, and a winning history in blackjack and backgammon, and having won a staring contest at the national level, plus a 10,000 word essay to the CRA on why they should believe you will beat poker might be enough.

Keep in mind that most people would rather not pay taxes on their winnings. Therefore very few people voluntarily ask the CRA to classify them as professonal poker players. When somebody comes to the CRA and says "I haven't won anything yet but I wanna be taxed as a pro", the CRA are going to go all Stanislavski on him, and ask "What's your motivation here?".

I have a question about a friend. He is Canadian and is married to an American. He has a green card and works in the US starting last year. He works as an independent contractor which means that social security taxes are taken out of his pay and he has to pay income taxes as well which are not withheld from his paycheck. All his income is earned in the US. I am not sure if he has any Canadian tax liabilities from his employment. I believe an American who works outside the US does not have to pay taxes on income up to a certain amount.

He wants to play online. He has a Canadian address and bank account. I do not know how he plans on doing this. He expressed concern about his Canadian tax liabilities from playing. I have read the last 200 posts in this thread as well as some of the tax wiki and from that I have some idea of Canadian tax law. It seems that if he had a job in Canada and made some money playing he would not have to declare it.

So what about being a Canadian, working in the US and playing in Canada? What would the CRA think of that? He does spend some time in Canada but not much. Again the only reason I am asking is because he expressed concern over taxes and I told him I would try and find some answers for him.

Even though there isn't much new here, it still sets an interesting precedent. My first year sounds so much like this guy it made me chuckle, except that I made $30k profit in my first year, and was completely new to poker when I got into it. I was finished all my Masters research in Chemistry and just had my thesis to write. My boss was really slack so I basically just cleaned out my desk and my bench space and fume hood in the lab and said I was going to write my thesis at home. I was still registered at the University for the first 4 months of that year and collecting a stipend as well as scholarship bonus, but I was actually at home learning how to play poker starting at the NL4 buy-ins. My thesis took only a couple weeks to write because I simply had to write an intro then copy paste from my publications.

Anyway, I ended the year up 30k as I said but it could have gone the other way. This was 2009. I haven't looked back since. Question is should I really be liable to pay tax for 2009? I can see an argument for 2010, but as we can see from this case above I would never have gotten a tax credit if the whole thing had gone south. Seems like a double standard to me. For 2009 that would only be about 5k in tax, but it's the principle of it all the bugs me. 2010 I had a reasonable expectation of profit, but 2009 I certainly did not.

I would think that the American job would have no impact on the taxability of his poker winnings in Canada.

I can't see the CRA saying every winning poker player had a reasonable expectation of profit in the first year they actually made a profit. Until one has played enough hands that a statisitcal analysis shows that a winning result is very highly unlikely to be due to variance, there is no reason for the CRA to clasify a player as operating a business. Even if they do eventually classify a player as running a business, they are not going to reclassify the player's status in previous years, if the data available up to those years did not unambiguously indicate a sufficient degree of skill or knowledge to reliably beat the game.

That sounds reasonable. You seem confident in your knowledge, you mind me asking what qualifications you have?