BBB is going to have a huge impact on sports gambling

jethreauxdawg

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Dec 20, 2010
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I know many people who gamble on sports, all of them are mostly >$20 bettors with an occasional $100. Most understand that they aren’t going to make money, in the long run, off sports gambling. Like Fantasy Football, it’s entertainment.
There’s a lot of people barely clearing $100/week prior to gambling, and then lose $20/night on sports gambling apps.
 
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CaptainFalcon

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I had a client once who would turn in about 70 or so W2-G's every year. All for low 4 figures. He had no records to support his losses, but said he lost more than he won. I thought, I know for a fact you lost more than you won. No one could possibly have that many fairly small wins and still be up on the casino.

Those bulk W-2G situations are a pain in the rear to input into a tax return. We had a guy with over 300 of them once.
 

Perd Hapley

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It’s just odd that if someone goes to a blackjack table for 5 minutes and wins four $250 hands but loses eight $250 hands that you want them to claim $1000 in income.
Is it any better that you sit down and pull out a ledger with each hand you play, write down the wins in one column then the losses in another, then add up your losses, multiply the number by 0.9, and take that final output to make sure your tax reporting is accurate?

To be clear, I wasn’t talking about micromanaging at that level. More along the lines of just what happens when you walk in and walk out of a casino….in your example. If I buy in with $1000 and I cash out with $1500, I get taxed on $500. Doesn’t matter how you get there. Gambling is entertainment….or at least it should be. Fostering a system where its anything more than that and incentivizes people to do it more often is going to create issues with people struggling on the addiction side of things. If you’re fortunate enough to win, pay whatever the legally required tax is. You lose, too bad. That’s the cost of doing business.

For reporting purposes, I think a sensible approach is that you get a consolidated statement each year from whichever and however many private entities you use as your “platform”, and your wins / losses get combined within that entity, however many bets you make. So, you can offset your taxable income with your losses within one entity, but not across the board to multiple others. Of course that will never happen, particularly with casinos, as they have always been set up on a cash based model where the transactions remain as untraceable as possible. Everyone gets their cut that way…..casino controls the intake manually, distribution of winnings have paperwork to cover their losses for their tax liability, they charge exorbitant fees to 3rd party vendors using ATM’s on their floor, and those 3rd party vendors charge even more exorbitant withdrawal fees to use those ATM’s. And the consumers get to potentially rake in tons of untraceable income.

Can’t make that type of system happen? Then simply save everybody the time and headache of even having gambling profits as taxable income (or at least below a certain income threshold), because it’s about as unenforceable as it possibly could be in the current configuration.
 

johnson86-1

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Aug 22, 2012
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Sidenote: I have libertarian streak in me and I do not care what an individual does with their money. However, I am watching a lot of people close to me develop a sports gambling addiction that is starting to affect people they love. Its never been easier to gamble on sports.

One piece of the BBB that is being overlooked is how gambling winnings are taxed. Right now, you are taxed on profit. If you lose $100,000 in bets and win $102,000 in bets, you get taxed on the $5,000 you make. Now, you can only count 90% of your losses, so now you are taxed on $12,000 when you won $2,000. Depending on the tax bracket, you could pay more than $2k in taxes on your winnings.
Based on my inability to follow your math, one of us definitely doesn't need to gamble.
 

paindonthurt

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Apr 7, 2025
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Wait a minute, you can actually write off gambling LOSSES? That’s actually a thing? Even if its only 90%, that’s 17ing absurd.
I don’t think you can write off a net gambling loss

like you can’t say you are down $50,000 for the year and get a $50,000 income deduction
 

Perd Hapley

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Correct.

Now, if you won $30,000 and had to report that in say one trip, you could theoretically lie and come up with some losses to offset it.
This is kind of my point.

Say you theoretically buy 10 lottery tickets a day for a year. One hits for something modest like $50,000. Rest are duds. You have to pay something like $15,000 in taxes. Can you say “oh, but I had $10,000 in losses from all the tickets I didn’t win” to reduce your tax burden? That’s pretty silly.
 

paindonthurt

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This is kind of my point.

Say you theoretically buy 10 lottery tickets a day for a year. One hits for something modest like $50,000. Rest are duds. You have to pay something like $15,000 in taxes. Can you say “oh, but I had $10,000 in losses from all the tickets I didn’t win” to reduce your tax burden? That’s pretty silly.
I'm sure if you were audited youd have to have some type of proof. Just creating a fake log might work though.

Same with a lot of other things. People can write off mileage. Did you drive 8,000 miles for your business or 23,000?
 
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stateu1

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This is kind of my point.

Say you theoretically buy 10 lottery tickets a day for a year. One hits for something modest like $50,000. Rest are duds. You have to pay something like $15,000 in taxes. Can you say “oh, but I had $10,000 in losses from all the tickets I didn’t win” to reduce your tax burden? That’s pretty silly.
Absolutely you can. At the dog track in west Memphis we used to pick up discarded losing tickets in case they were ever needed.
 
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stateu1

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I'm sure if you were audited youd have to have some type of proof. Just creating a fake log might work though.

Same with a lot of other things. People can write off mileage. Did you drive 8,000 miles for your business or 23,000?
The casinos print you a win/loss log.
 

Perd Hapley

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I'm sure if you were audited youd have to have some type of proof. Just creating a fake log might work though.

Same with a lot of other things. People can write off mileage. Did you drive 8,000 miles for your business or 23,000?
Yeah but the mileage on your vehicle is at least capped at some maximum of total miles on the odometer. Gambling losses could be made infinitely as big as you needed them to be.
 
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