Hary Porter wrote .....
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Documentation of cash withdrawals and markers is dubious documentation
in itself. While you may wish the presumption be made that you
gambled the cash away, there's nothing within those documents to
preclude the possibility you brought home a pile of cash and stuffed
it into your mattress.
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Harry, if it were 1 or 2 or 10 ATM withdrawls from a casino, I might side with you a little bit. However, this was numerous ATM withdrawls, sometimes 10 or more in a day ,and this was done day after day. Why would anyone a) go to a casino to make an ATM withdrawl if they weren't going to gamble and b) make numerous ATM withdrawls in a single day?? Why pay the $4 - $10 ATM charge in a casino when it's more like a dollar at a non casino ATM??
If it were ATM withdrawls from a non casino?ATM, it's?more believable that the funds weren't used for gambling. ?
I grant you that the withdrawls themselves aren't proof that you played and lost. But guess what? There is no absolute proof that you played and lost. Tables estimate wins and losses and machine tracking is notoriously inaccurate. I have played at casinos, tracked my play, all my play had been done with a player's card and my win/loss from the casino is nowhere near accurate. So if none of the tracking methods is very accurate, it gives the IRS more power to deny a legitimate loss deduction.
You can't photograph your play and your personal diary is just you writing down your wins and losses. With no real accounting of wins and losses, it makes it very easy for the IRS to challenge any deduction. Since the W2G reporting method is only for payments ( not wins) of $1200 or more on a single wager, they only state a small part of the gambling story. And it just happens that the small part it reports is favorable to the IRS's bottom line.
The IRS is trying to move to how most states tax gambling for non professionals. W2, pay me and screw you if you lost the money the next day.
I remain scared by this story. The IRS accepts that he played 10 hours a day on $5 slots that paid 55% to 90% but doesn't believe he lost $2 million in 3 years?
As Bob Dylan might say " Don't overtax what you can't understand".
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