No poker update--it's tax time

Nothing upsets US poker players more than the income tax laws and regulations. I'll probably go into more detail in a future post. But I'll give you one example.

A professional poker player may be asked to prove that poker is actually his profession, and to prove that poker in fact takes up most of his work time and/or provides most of his income.

Poker pros basically file the same tax forms as any other person who is self-employed. That is, they file Form 1040, Schedule SE (self-employment) and Schedule C (business income and expenses). In most cases we also play quarterly estimated tax payments.

So, a poker player has to be pretty much that--a poker player, and nothing else. However, I could theoretically have a lawn care business, a pet grooming business, be a performing musician, and tutor high school students. All I would have to do is file a Schedule C for each business.

It's tax time now, so there is no poker update. I've spent much of the last two days getting everything together for my taxes. I have a large spreadsheet*, about 5,500 lines worth, that I ordered from PokerStars, so I have all of my tournament records--sort of. On schedule C I have to list my tournament net wins as business income. My tournament net losses (when I paid a tournament entry fee and didn't cash), are business expenses.

So now I'm going through that spreadsheet, line by line, separating the net wins from net losses, and filtering out the cashouts and deposits (money moved in or out of my PokerStars account), which aren't relevant to my tax return.

Should the IRS in fact ask me to prove my professional status, I also keep a lot of other records, including the weekly tracking of my work hours, broken down by adminstrative, study, and playing).

A national sales tax is looking better every day.

--------------------------------------------------

*The word "large" is relative here. I have never attempted to play more than 6 tables, and I usually play 2-4 at a time. But there are players out there playing 24 or more tables at a time. On the twoplustwo.com poker forums, one player reports playing 50.