‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ potentially very bad for poker (players) in the US + STAY ON TOPIC!!

And if you want example of elites sitting in ivory towers laughing at us bickering, it's the American Gaming Association who posted on Twitter that the Big Beautiful Bill was such great news. Why would they do that if the wagering tax would obviously hurt their industry? Cause they're otherwise thrilled because uber-wealthy own casinos and uber-wealthy got a huge tax break. And the uber-wealthy are friends with Trump.

EVEN THE POKER NEWS article on this mentions that people think the wagering tax might get rewritten because casino owners are friends with Trump.

If you want to see where the elites in Ivory Towers are looking down laughing at us, it's Republican donors who bought Republicans politicians to push through this bill. It's not "both sides", they're all Republican.

Democrats unamimously voted against screwing over players.
Republicans almost unaminously voted for screwing over poker players.

**** out of here with the "both sides" garbage and get some counseiling help in getting out of your cult where you let Trump piss in your face and your response is to say both sides are causing it to rain.

This is true for most countries btw. Politicians are horrible everywhere.

One can make the case that in Singapore they've been consistently good for decades, but it's the exception to the rule.

Even Milei and Bukele that have been good in a few important parameters, raise doubts/questions in several subjects.

DNegs has been more MAGA than Polk has, by far. Polk basically said he voted for Trump and nothing else. DNegs has been endlessly moaning about all sorts of culture war issues. Constantly criticizing Tim Walz who was the Democratic VP etc

If you spend a significant amount of your time criticizing Democrats, and never criticize Republicans, in the buildup to a Trump election and Trump term, you effectively endorsed Trump. Has DNegs even said anything about this bill?

In reality, I truly believe that DNegs just loves attention, and when Twitter was mostly liberal he was a liberal, and when Elon bought it and it went MAGA, he went MAGA. He's a chameleon with no principles, just thirsting for more likes.

But he's absolutely gone quite political and quite MAGA in the last year or so.

I actually respect Doug a lot more than Daniel because at least Doug is pretty forthright about his values. He's basically looking out for himself with a libertarian political streak. DNegs is the one who constantly needs to virtue signal but will flip what he considers virtuous on a dime if the winds change how they're blowing even a little.

The 90% is calculated off your losses, not your gains. That is the plain language of the legislation. I don’t know how you are twisting the langauge to arrive at the conclusion you have, but it’s wrong.

You are inserting a “such” into “such gains” that isn’t in the statute; maybe that’s where you’re tripping up, but even with this, it still requires a weird intepretation that just isn’t there, and isn’t intended.

I don't assume you support Trump.

We don't have to be at each other's throat.

All we need to do is acknowledge the factual reality that

1) Poker is being existentially threatened by a bill
2) Republicans near unanimously supported it, Democrats unanimously opposed it
3) Therefore, any arguments that "both sides are bad" is a non-sequitur in this specific conversation
4) Doubly so because the only congressperson to highlight this problem is a Democrat

You were right in your original sentiment that the problem is a lack of organization and too much division. But you can't possibly organize towards a greater goal (in this case, keeping tax systems fair for poker players) unless you acknowledge reality. In this case, the reality is that Republicans ****ed poker and Democrats tried to stop it, therefore, if you care about poker, you should rally behind Democrats.

If you actually want to fix stuff, you do have to work within the system somewhat, which is pushing for politicians who will protect your interests, which in this case is Democrats.

Now, if you care about other stuff more than poker and you vote otherwise for that reason, fine. But there needs to be zero ambiguity that, if your top priority is poker, both parties are NOT the same. Republicans are a huge problem, Democrats are your answer, specifically for poker.

I don't want to be at anyone's throats. I just want everyone to agree on an objective set of facts. And "both sides are screwing us over" undermines that objective reality because, within the context of this conversation, it's patently false.

In your example it is 90% on $150k ($135k), which is capped the extent of gains ($100k). You have $0 taxable profit.

People are up in arms as you could pay taxes despite having a losing year:

$100,000 won and lost $110,000 in a year would only be permitted to claim $99,000 in deductible losses, meaning they would have a taxable income of $1,000 even though they did not net profit on their wagers.

Professionals (those who plan to profit most years) are more up in arms for this instance:

$110,00 won and lost $100,000 in a year, their taxable profit would now be $20,000 (a 100% increase due to the bill). Essentially $10k of phantom income is being created and taxed.

“But you don't want unity and organization, you are part of a cult where the Democrats are _always_ in the wrong, even when objective reality defies you.”

This lead me to the belief you think I support trump. I think they are all scum and we are in a place where our collective voice no longer overtakes the “voice” of their donors. They will never again listen to the common man after the glass stegal act was overturned and citizens united put in place.

“ If you want unity and organization, then you need to rally behind politicians who are in your corner.”

Another fallacy. There is no politician in OUR corner, only when our corner alignes with their specific interests

We are being cornered by the government, we need to bound together as Citizens and rework the way our Government works for US and not the big tech and corps of this world.

I have already emailed my Rep and dropped a link for those of you to make your voice heard.

I’ll call on Monday. Gl players.

Trying to get my head around how bad this might be for poker, gambling, and Vegas?

First thought is US pro MTT guys are screwed but feels less clear how this will effect more recreational MTT players.

Maybe it creates and uptick in cash as MTTers don't want to deal with extra tax and just play cash instead? I also wonder if it further decrease travel/gambling to Vegas and that has negative impact on cash games?

More broadly this seems really bad for DFS.

That's Trumpism and his supporters in a nutshell. They've struck exactly 0 deals worth mentioning with countries that aren't involved in the killing of Yemeni children.

Crater the market with tariff talk, let market recover because of tariff breaks and claim it a victory the market is at an all-time high. Market has seen a steady increase since October 2022 but lets pretend orange monkey is the reason it's recovered and continues to go up.

But hey, I'm sure they will be selling many ''Large Engine Vehicles'' in Vietnam.

Art of the deal everyone!

I think your analysis is largely on point. On the whole, there's a very small class of tournament players, particularly the high end guys, for whom this is going to be pretty bad. The bigger the tournaments, the lower the ROI % even though ROI can go up in real dollars, and it's those gamblers that are grinding a small edge for large dollar amounts that are going to get hammered by this.

Gambling rules already sucked for recreational players that don't itemize, so nothing really changes there. And most of the true recreational players will have losses in excess of 110% of wins anyway.

The area you pointed to is the one where stuff is the ugliest - online DFS, because they can track all the transactions easily but the margins are small. With physical casino gambling that isn't machine tracked like that, nothing is really changing; the usual shenanigans will carry on.

At most, I see this hampering some of the high roller and super high roller scene, but something like a normal WSOP tournament isn't going to see a big change.

You are either hopelessly naive about politics, or attempting some sort of bizarre spin here.

Democrats did not vote against screwing over players. They voted against Trump. They could give two shits about players. They probably didn't even know that was in the bill. It didn't really matter what was in the bill, they were going to vote against it.

Neither did the republicans.

Gotta love politics.

Wow great point man. You're right though, they were probably more worried about

Medicaid cuts
Tax cuts for wealthy
Adding ~3 trillion to national debt
Cuts to housing programs

Just to name a few.

Voting D is still the only way to improve life for 99% of americans, but yeah they probably dont care about poker at all.

Those of us who have been around for a bit remember the u.i.g.e.a ****ery , and that was 100% republicans.

Simple truth is that Republicans are the party of evangelicals, and evangelicals view gambling as a sin to be punished.

Thus democrats are the party for you if your interest is online poker.

Someone who is still a Trumper after everything, I have decided to just stop engaging with them. Because they are either woefully ignorant, a narcissistic sociopath, or a fascist. And there is no discussion with that. So anyone who comes out on 2 + 2 as still a supporter of this criminal president, I will simply ignore. I will not discuss anything with them. About anything, ever. Shunning might not do anything to help, but it is better for my mental health.

Exactly.

Unless you’re in California!!!

Avelino Valencia (born November 12, 1988) is an American Democratic politician who is currently serving as a member of the California State Assembly for the 68th district since 2022.

In California, Assemblymember Avelino Valencia is the lawmaker trying to ban sweepstakes poker and other forms of online sweepstakes gambling through Assembly Bill 831.

Crazy how things change so fast huh??

**** all these scumbags.

Go head and keep cheerleading these DS and Rs.

Yup.

Oh no!

I applaud your hate of Trump as he is the nut low of human beings, and the single worst political force to wreak havoc on America in the last 40+ years. The ignorance of the Trump cult is quite astounding. However, as others have pointed out, you are delusional in your own right if you think "Dem good, Rep bad' sums up our issues. Both sides are equally as bad and equally to blame for how we have gotten to this point. Politics in general has turned inherently evil and turned a blind eye to the American public. Who knows if the Dem's actually care of some of the issues at hand, and most certainly could care less about how this affects gamblers like you, they are just against Trump no matter what, which isn't really all that bad in a vacuum.

As bad as Trump is, the left is not much better. They pick the worst fights and issues to die on the battlefield over, constantly pushing crap in our face that we may agree on morally, but don't want to be reminded of it every second of the day and told we are the 'bad ones' if we don't fully support something. That is the best way I can dance around a few current social issues lol.

In the end, if people do not start moving towards the center more and continue to move to the fringes and far left/right, we are completely screwed. So, if you want to truly rally people, rally them at the center of the political spectrum, support the 'Independent' Party (like myself as a registered Ind), or help to create a whole new 3rd party. Telling people they have the wrong views and are on the wrong side politically is the complete opposite of how you would want to approach this. Open your eyes and educate yourself more if you truly want to try to make a difference.

You're accusing me of "bizarre spin", when what you quoted by me was literally me citing two objective facts.

Republicans created this bill and near-unanimous supported it, Democrats unanimously opposed it.

Those are facts, that's the very opposite of "spin" if you know what the word "spin" means. "Spin" is how you interpret those facts, which is what you're doing when you're saying "Democrats didn't care about poker players, they were just voting against Trump".

You're the one spinning here because you're taking stuff that's _not_ factual and just an assumption you have (Democrats' motivation) and trying to apply it to the conversation.

But, if we take your assumption as possible, why would Democrats oppose everything Trump does? Is it because they just don't like his haircut?

No, it's the Trump supporters who are the overly-emotional people who oppose people based on superficial details about them - just look to earlier in this threaad when, forced to come up with a reason they are happy this happened, is because they avoided "cackling" Kamala. Who gives a **** about someone cackling?

But no, Democrats are not opposed to Trump because of superficial things, but because of the things he actually does. In this case, make a huge bill that screws over millions of Americans to benefit a few of his friends.

All the while , he's running up massive deficits, something Republican supporters with _no_ principles constantly claim they're against, they constantly claim their "fiscal conservatives", but as soon as they get in office they spend like a trophy wife at a jewelry store who just got a credit limit increase.

The only part of your "spin" that's true is that Democrats were not specifically caring about poker players, but they were broadly opposed to a broad bill that ****s over millions of American. Most Americans are getting screwed via inflation down the line because of higher deficits will force money printing, and denial of health care via things like Medicaid. But many more Americans got screwed in smaller ways. Poker players didn't screwed for no reason, they wanted to look for more tax revenue so they could give billionares bigger tax breaks at expenses of many small people. Poker players are just one of those many small groups of people.

So while Democrats weren't specifically defending poker players, they were broadly opposed to a bill that screws over many groups of people in many ways, of which poker players were just a small one.

Don't accuse me of "spin" until you learn what the word "spin" means. Me citing two objective facts:

1. Republican House, Senate, and White House pushed through this bill that ****s over poker players
2. Every Democrat voted against it

Is facts and logic. The only reason you're calling it "spin" is because you're getting emotionally upset that your daddy Trump is getting exposed as the conman that smarter people knew he was all along, and you're too far in to admit it.

you are a product of your environment.

the effects of generational propaganda from fox and others took effect 9 years ago and has fully engulfed these people.

they have been taught from age 0 that democrats and the national media are bad and anything counter to that they learn at school growing up is simply 'indoctrination' by the leftists.

good ****ing luck trying to convince 1 of them otherwise.

So they changed Joe Biden's 1099-K reporting requirement mandates from $600 back to 20k...
(Threshold for third-party platforms (e.g., PayPal, Venmo, DraftKings, FanDuel, etc.) reporting income via Form 1099-K is now back to $20,000 and 200 transactions, up from the $600 threshold)

But for whatever reason they decided to screw us over, poker players/sports bettors on being taxed on losses/paying extra tax... Pretty sad to think that Ted Cruz didn't speak on this aspect

At least the SALT cap was raised to 40k...

***

The UK and Germany seem to have harsh tax implications on gamblers/poker players. Not sure why we decided to follow suit with mandating higher tax for gamblers.

The US gov't should just mandate playing poker or sports betting as earned income. Whos going to be the first politician to advocate for this? Doug Polk?

https://youtu.be/hAFTXPpsRfc?si=jcTQKVaH...

You don't track sessions by buyin amount and cashout amount. You count each session as a net win or net loss, and then total all of the winning sessions as gambling winnings, and all of the losing sessions as net losses. I use Poker Bankroll Tracker and filter on Profit from -99999 to 0 for losses, and 0 to 99999 for wins. Assuming 600k in winning sessions and 500k in losing sessions, you would pay an additional 15k in taxes, for a 68% tax increase. If your actual winning session total is not 600k, but some lower figure, then the tax hit would not be as much.

[CODE]
Winnings: 600000
Losses: 500000
Net: 100000
Allowed deduction: 450000
Tax (2024 single rate, including QBI and SE tax): 37570
Effective tax rate: 37.57%
Previous tax: 22327
Previous effective tax rate: 22.33%
Tax increase: 68.27%
[/CODE]

Take the L