Professional gamblers – poker pros included – have always been somewhat discriminated against when it came to the matter of taxes. Now, however, they’ve gotten something of a reprieve, as revealed in an article at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. According to the article, gambling professionals can now deduct business expenses, even if the outcome of their gambling was negative. This piece of news will no doubt please those who live by their cards and their wits alone, as this will ease a big burden for the players.
No More Death in Taxes
Basically, what this ruling means is that poker players can now take all their business expenses – like transportation fees and hotel fees and research – will now be written off as expenses incurred while doing the job. Poker pros were very much confused as to how this thing worked before. Would the money they spent outside of the buy-in be considered along with any possible losses they may have gotten? Or could they write that off as a business expense and hope to get a bit of a tax exemption for it? Some tax experts believed that the latter was so, but they were not sure until only recently. Actually, they have one Robert Mayo to thank for this development. May was involved in a case where he had listed $11,000 in his expenses for his 2001 taxes.
There was a bit of confusion when it came to the amount of money that he listed as his ‘expenses’, as he included his travel expenses to and from the racetrack as well as the money he spent on research, which amounted to about $11,000. The court finally ruled that these would not be included in his list of wagering losses but would instead be considered as a business expense. It may not have been a poker player standing up on court that day, but his actions managed to help those in the poker industry as well.
Deeper Meanings
Of course, there’s something much more important that’s at play here. With the new ruling, gambling has finally been acknowledged as a profession. Poker professionals really can call themselves true professionals now. However, the question is: how would you know that a gambler is professional or not? Well, first of all, that person must earn more from gambling than from any other aspect in his life. The IRS has not yet given exact guidelines but has said that they would examine each person’s case individually.
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