My feeling about the W2G is that the greedy IRS should be
fair and track large losses (over $1200) as well, but we know
they will never be that fair. I think the IRS and income tax should
be abolished and institute in it's place the Federal Sales Tax
that is already applied to fuel sales.
YOU are able to track both your losses and your winnings; the W2G is just a form to keep those who cheat on their taxes "honest" on at least some portion of their winnings.
In fact, YOU are REQUIRED to do so.
Be careful what you wish for -- I can easily imagine a Fed. Sales Tax that is unreasonably high, and that is somehow applied to coin-in on gambling. I recently visited a casino where the TITO machine did not accept cash -- you went to a machine and put your cash in there, and it issued a ticket that you then put in the machine. I mention this because that would be one way to tax coin-in, even if you don't actually put it in -- require a players card to use this machine, and deduct the tax before issuing the ticket, and the "desired" tax is collected and the necessary record-keeping done all at once. And I can't think of a way to "game" THAT system.
The greedy IRS has always considered income taxable for a while now - and gambling income will not be exempted, at least not until gamblers become a well-organized and easily identified lobbying force, which can funnel political contributions to legislators -- not very likely, but possible.
--BG
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