More Articles
If you had a successful night at the slots or poker tables, you're going to have to share some of the lucky proceeds with Uncle Sam. The Internal Revenue Service generally requires that you report your gambling winnings and losses separately when you file your taxes rather than combining the two amounts.
Record Keeping
Lost it all, time for recovery. Hello everybody. My name is Jonas, and I'm a gambling addict. My gambling habit started around 2011, when I was going through hard times in my personal life. At the time I did not realize it, but the gambling habit was probably some kind of (destructive) self therapy, which made me feel slightly better If I happened.
- In Wisconsin, for example, you can win a million dollar jackpot and go on a gambling spree losing it all and end up with a huge state income tax bill because none of the losses can offset the win. For federal you would report the income and deduct the losses on Schedule A; very little additional tax, if any, would result on the federal tax return.
- Mar 13, 2015 Compulsive gambling is an illness to which I lost nearly everything.
- Opinion On my way to meet friends, I'd stop at a TAB and lose all my money Every pay day for nine years, Lucas gambled away his wages. Last year, the 39-year-old applied for a treatment program as.
As you gamble during the year, you need to keep records of your winnings and losses so that you can support whatever figures you report on your taxes. The IRS permits you to use per-session recording, which means that instead of recording whether you won or lost each time you pull the slot machine, you can simply record your total for the session. Your records should include the date and type of gambling, where you gambled and if you gambled with anyone else, such as a home poker game. If you win more than $600, you should receive a Form W-2G from the casino.
Lost It All Gambling Reddit
Taxable Winnings
Lost It All Gambling
When figuring your gambling winnings, only include the winnings from each session rather than using losses to offset your gains. You have to include gambling winnings even if you didn't receive a Form W-2G from the casino. For example, if you gambled six times during the year, winning $100, $3,000, $4,000 and $6,000 but losing $5,000 and $2,000, your gambling winnings for the year are $13,100. This amount gets reported on line 21 of your Form 1040 tax return.
Gambling Losses
To claim your gambling losses, you have to itemize your deductions. Gambling losses are a miscellaneous deduction, but -- unlike some other miscellaneous deductions -- you can deduct the entire loss. The deduction goes on line 28 of Schedule A and you have to note that the deduction is for gambling losses. For example, if you lost $5,000 on one occasion and $7,000 on another, your total deduction is $12,000.
Gambling Loss Limitation
You can't deduct more in gambling losses than you have in gambling winnings for the year. For example, suppose you reported $13,000 in gambling winnings on Line 21 of Form 1040. Even if you lost $100,000 that year, your gambling loss deduction is limited to $13,000. Worse, you aren't allowed to carry forward the excess, so if you had $87,000 in losses you couldn't deduct last year, you can't use that to offset the gambling income from the current year.
- tax forms image by Chad McDermott from Fotolia.com