During my audit I successfully argued $1200 was an arbitrary
number and that W2G's were meaningless and had little impact
on the sessions results.
Therefore, at the end of the year I request a copy of W2G's
from each Casino and include it with my taxes. I then
provide a spreadsheet from my log with one line for each
session. I sum the total of my sessions and that is the
number that goes on my 1040. Not an extremely difficult
process.Now, if I had to include the value of comps and
freeplay it would make the process more complex change many
losing years to winners.
__________________________________________
mdblack2002 wrote:
The proposed changes would be devastating in terms of waste
and therefore cost. First consider the already existing
problems for most video poker players. There are many hours
required to collect and then assemble all the costs
associated with itemized deductions so one can claim
gambling losses against gambling gains (w2g's). Second,
there are potentially hours required to input the w2g's and
itemized deduction info into the tax form, if you are using
a commercial program such as TurboTax. Third, there is also
the administrative cost for the casino, and loss of revenue
as players sit waiting for their hand pays and w2gs. And
this is not the worst of it. The worst of it is that you
will then pay more taxes than you would have, if you had not
received any W2G's at all, regardless of whether you won or
lost for the year. The artificially high adjusted gross
income can cause a higher threshold for the medical
deduction and remove the ability to take advantage of tax
credits or deductions, such as for educational costs, just
to name a couple that effected me. Now consider this with
W2gs for amounts between $600-1199. I suspect the number of
W2Gs could increase 4X, and the amounts captured might
double for someone playing denominations ranging between $
0.25 and 1.00. As for using the "session method", I am not
going to take the audit risk and would likely just quit
playing or at a minimum would have to hire a CPA for an
otherwise simple personal tax. Yes this is a big deal. Why
is the IRS considering these changes? It is rather obvious
revenue would increase drastically. Sadly, it would not be a
tax not on winnings, but more a tax on recreational
gamblers.
Posted by: joel0457 <joel0457@yahoo.com>
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