US Casino Players Face New Tax Rule

Poker Players aren't going to be able to bluff the IRS about their poker winnings anymore on Tuesday.  Casinos are now going to have record winnings of $5,000 or more to the International Revenue Service and will now give gamblers a tax form so they can record their payout.

This is a great reason for those US land based players to go online to play in online poker games since most poker sites aren't based in the US and this would make their winnings much harder for the government to track.

This new proposal is actually a better deal then the one that was proposed before, the previous proposal would have made casinos withhold 25 percent of the players tournament winnings for tax purposes but that proposal wasn't very popular so now we have the new compromise.

“There was such an outrage and outcry from the community, to suck all that money out” that the government changed its mind, said Marissa Chien, a gambling tax expert in Las Vegas.

Chien who is the co-author of the book "Tax Help For Gamblers" had this to say about the new rule, “It's always been the law” to report winnings. All they're doing is making the casino enforce it. They're seeing money that's falling through the cracks".