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

I personally think you are misunderstanding things but I will wait for further people correcting you. If you aren't a brit you are a Euro tho.

Nope. No idea why youd think that and odd you'd try to tell me where I live and have lived my entire life.

A buy in isn't a loss unless you brick. No different than cash games. If you buy in for 1,000 dollars and cash out 3,000 dollars you had a 2,000 dollar win for the session .not a 3,000 dollar win with a 1,000 dollar loss.

I believe this is the correct interpretation of the tax law.

But it's easily confused because it's not consistently correct on the W2G forms issued for large cashes. I can't remember how it's reported for poker tournaments. But I have in front of me a W2G I got for winning $1250 for a straight flush on a $25 video poker pull. It reports that I had a win of $1250, not $1225.

Slots and video poker are handled differently than live poker. The cost of the pull is not deducted but live poker the win is net of entry fee. This is clearly discussed on the W2G form instructions. Goto the reportable gambling winnings section at this link.

https://www.irs.gov/instructions/iw2g

I'm a cash game player mostly.

If we are playing online, how do we figure out losing and winning sessions? Is reporting the net amount won or lost online in cash games allowed?

Online cash has really low margins in my experience. These games are already getting raked pretty hard in most places, so I feel like those are going to be absolutely unbeatable at this point by anyone over a large sample if it's being taxed by the "session" and the losses are going to be very significant.

Also sports betting would be impossible.

When it comes live play, can we go daily on this and count that as a session? Can we track our live play on google sheets or Excel?

This seems like an absolute competitive disadvantage for Americans playing poker. If I'm correct, a lot of the Europeans that play out here don't pay any taxes on their earnings.

This is so unfair!

I'm finally making good money at poker and now this bill comes through, this certainly makes me want to get my side gig going just to be safe.

Why is this guy not banned from 2 + 2?

No respect at all

And allowed to repost his nonsense again.

Stay on topic sir.

I messaged my accountant and he informed me about the Fair Bet Act that they are trying to get through. As some others mentioned in the thread, this could restore the loss deductions to 100% of losses so we are not paying taxes on money we didn't earn.

They are planning some reconciliation bills, is there any reason why they can't add the fair bet act on to one of the reconciliation bills? Theoretically?

I think that President Trump wants to see Vegas do well, that he's fond of Las Vegas, and he's a fair guy. We also have Senator Ted Cruz who is supportive.

He's also buddy's with Dana White (UFC President). This could help us out.

The early deadline allows a lot of time for more reconciliation bills.

As it's laid out, this is a disaster if does actually go into effect. That's for sure!

you must have missed the posts where people shared tweets from the casino industry applauding the bill

vegas wants this - that's the entire reason it happened

it forces aps to self deport and will save them massively as a big expense for them is not only getting hit by aps but also employing counter measures against them

yeah, 99% of casino patrons won't be effected by this at all - they all lose more than the max deduction anyway and probably don't even deduct that either

For an American pro (like myself), live cash games look like the only thing worth playing starting in 2026

I'm not sure, but it seems like non-American poker players could benefit by this bill in some ways. They won't be subjected to the taxes that Americans are going to get hit with.

It will be like they are playing with no rake compared to what an American Taxpayer is paying to play live poker.

Is the problem solved by just playing Live cash games?

Online cash games would seem to be unbeatable due to the low margins?

Or am I wrong?

I went through the first few pages of the thread which was clogged up with a lot of political conversation (too toxic to go through that to be honest). I can't find anything on google that supports the claim that Nevada or Las Vegas was supportive of the 90% cap.

I'm not sure why the rep from Nevada would be trying to get it reversed if they really wanted it to pass, by aiming for the Fair Bet Act.

Most foreign players live in countries where their worldwide income is taxed (and subject to various social stuff), so they need to report that too. Ofc they could try and cheat by not reporting, just like Americans, but this will look particularly suspicious if they have no other income of note. So everything same as with Americans (up to now). The only way they could benefit probably is if a lot of Americans pros will quit the job as a result of that and games will become easier, maybe.

don't play online poker anymore but it would depend on whether the forms they issue the irs include all wins and losses or just give the net total

sportsbetting and dfs sites do wins and losses so those are effectively kaput if you're a winner at either

For this reason I agree with this sentiment as well. Apparently the AGA was against this provision in May when it first heard of it, and now it is backing the Fair Bet Act, which would be very hard without most casinos having the same position. There are plenty of reasons why casinos would support this bill without supporting this provision, including just kissing up to the current people in power.

My guess is that regular slots players rack up huge amounts of W2G's that they must deduct without paying an absurd bill, a lot of them probably have somewhere like -15%~15% roi with a lot more negatives. Even if most recreational gamblers don't itemize and pay taxes, I would guess a lot of hard-core slots players do, and these players probably make up a really decent chunk of casino revenues (way more than advantage players take would be my guess), and the casinos definitely don't these players' money to go anywhere but to them.

I would guess there's an around 80% chance atm that this provision gets reversed by this time next year (Kalshi and Poly has it at 60% by the end of this year). The vast majority of poker players would probably just accept the potential hit for now and keep playing, unlike slots or sports betting there are a lot of players that have relatively much higher winnings than losses (like a 3bb/100+ winner online, cash game players who win 7bb/hr+ who nets each day or a 25%+ roi mtt player, considering cashes would be netted as well). I would be more worried about the impact on the ecosystem, but considering a lot of amateurs in poker either don't report or lose enough to not be affected, the effect may not be that noticeable for the next year.

Another thing to note is that casinos are insanely worried about the impact of Kalshi (and potentially Polymarket) on their sports betting revenues. The situation is already stacked against them, having this 90% cap would guarantee to eventually kill them if they aren't able to win in court. If anything, the casinos want to raise W2G requirements and allow non-itemizers to deduct gambling losses, which would be a boon to the poker ecosystem and professionals.

I haven't read this whole thread, but isn't it the recreational players who really get punished by this bill?

As long as a pro is making over 10% after expenses this bill won't change anything for them. I'm playing tournaments semi professionally and I'm more worried about the effects on the ecosystem. I suppose I would get screwed if I ever had a losing year though, or if I made it to the nosebleeds where they're only making like 5% on average.

Recreational players really have it rough though. A rec who buys in for $330,000 and wins back $300,000 is losing $30,000 in a year.

Now they'll lose $30,000 and owe taxes on an additional $30,000 (10% of $300,000 since they can only write off 90%).

In the first year I don't see much changing but I can see the potential for some losing players to just quit after they have to pay a big tax bill on their losses.

Really how ridiculous is this bill considering they're affectively now taxing gambling LOSSES.

I’m not sure why people are still getting this wrong after it’s been explained several times in this thread.

If you have $300,000 in wins and $330,000 in losses, you could deduct 90% of the $330,000, which is $297,000, so you would owe tax on $3,000, not $30,000.

But more importantly, $330,000 in buy-ins is not the same as $330,000 in losses. You only have a loss if you buy-in for a certain amount, and then cash out for less, and your loss is the amount of the difference.

Someone with $330k in buy-ins and $300k in cash-outs would have a lot less than $330k in losses and a lot less than $300k in winnings, but how much of each they have is impossible to know without a log of each individual session.

If the rec bought in for $330k in a single session and cashed out for $300k, they would owe no tax on their gambling, as they would have no winnings and just a single $30k gambling loss.

Sorry I couldn't read through the whole thread due to intolerance for partisan mudslinging.

If what you say is true then the situation is much worse than I thought for professional tournament players.

So you're saying if I had $400,000 in profit and 300,000 in losses for the year whereas I previously would have owed tax on $100,000 profit, now I can only deduct 90% of 300,000 for $270,000?

So I effectively owe taxes on $130,000 even though I only made $100,000?

Yeah that sucks. I might have to switch back to cash games.

It's almost like the government is encouraging people to manufacture gambling losses by taxing them on more than they're making.

Yes, makes poker tournaments for Americans unbeatable most likely over the long run is that correct?

There's currently about a 60% chance on Polymarket that this won't go through.

I’m late to the party here. Has anyone put together any studies, charts, or potential estimates as to how this will specifically affect low stakes, mid stakes and high stake Poker players?

And how many players are making 100,000 a year in Poker ??? Surely very very little compared to the whole picture. Nonetheless it is unfortunate to have to pay more in taxes…

Let’s look at low stakes /“weekend warriors … OK how about somebody who potentially profits $10k-$30,000 a year playing poker. After the BBB Those players are probably looking at paying additional tax on anywhere from 2000 to $10,000 more depending on how many buys they have.

A big question is how bad will the trickle down affect me meaning for the super high stakes players who make money in poker or sports betting truly, what will be the trickle down effect. I suppose we can only guess.

Don’t give me wrong. I View This bill as a net negative for gambling…obv more so for tournaments as cash players already do not report their income on cash games. Still it’s a joke, especially because a lot of of evangelical Christians support this type of nonsense even though they own businesses or engaged other forms of capitalism where you have winners and losers way more losers in that industry compared to Poker.

So now we have to pay our local liquor stores and buy losing scratchers in bulk.

Extremely unlikely anything gets don’t to fix this regardless of attempts and I 100000% guarantee the “people” will do nothing to fight the politicians who push this cause they would rather fight over ReD BlUe then fight them as a whole

Right and it is outright hypocrisy as many of those Republicans, and possibly even Democrats who support anti gambling legislation all engage in various forms of capitalism where you have more losers than in the gambling industry.

Something like one percent of all gamblers are problem gamblers. Far far higher percentages of people lose money opening up a restaurant or business.

Actually, the betting odds are 60% that this will be fixed by the end of the year.