I just wanted to pass this one along. I'm starting on the 2012 taxes and many of the casinos now have downloadable win/loss statements. Anyway, my wife hit a $2,000+ progressive at The Cal and I hit a $1,250 4oak, both with the same card in the machines. According to my records we did lose about $300 at The Cal on the same card. Anyway the win/loss statement shows a yearly loss of -$505. Which would be close to a $4,000 loss after adding in the two hand pays and W2gs. Now before you speculate my wife is secretly losing more, it's not true. I know win/loss statements are not valid for an audit, but in this case, if I got audited it would back up the gambling log. We report W2gs almost every year for the last 20 years and losses to offset the winnings and have never been audited. But I do keep good records. Just passing this along. If they can error in my favor, it could go against you also.
Maybe I am a bit slow. But, if your loss is $505, and you add in hand pays and W2s, how do you show a higher LOSS?
The statements are not shown in terms of you won X $ and lost Y $, they are shown as a win or loss, yearly total. The handpays were hit with the card in the machine and therefore in the casino records we have $2,000 + $1,250= $3,250 in winnings. Now in order to have a yearly loss of $505, we would need to have gambled away the total of the two handpays, $3,250, plus another $505 in additional losses, for a total of $3,755 out of pocket. The win/loss statement shows we lost $505 in 2012, when in reality we had about a $2,900 profit at The Cal. Hope that clears it up. Everything is perfectly clear to me when I write it.:evillaugh
I apologize if I misunderstand but basically youre saying you falsified your gambling log and are engaging in tax fraud?
I didn't do anything since I haven't filed my tax return. My point was that if they could make a mistake on the win/loss statement that favored me, they could also make a mistake that didn't favor you and you should keep careful records. I didn't think the point was that hard to comprehend.