re: tax deduction question

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Probably true but why. both have risk. gambling is with money that has already been taxed. the operator pays tax on money you lose. you can write off stock losses ($3k) per year without having any gains. so why should someone be penalized for gambling when overall it was a net loss for the year

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You just said it. Even with stocks, your losses are very limited, they basically just offset gains with a minor $3k deduction. They do get suspended if not deductible in the current year, but again we are talking about capital assets.

If you were able to just deduct gambling losses year to year, you would be able to manage your income with self-reported losses. You could buy casino chips at the end of the year and say you lost them.

I don’t blame the IRS one bit for not allowing leeway to deduct losses for gambling, as that person is clearly a risk taker and more likely to take an aggressive tax position.


Now, as another poster pointed out these rules are old and outdated in several ways. Mobile sports betting, in which it’s just as easy to track losses as gains, could easily report a net figure for the year. And itemizing really only works in rare circumstances, mostly for high earners. So the rules could be updated, but allowing deductible net losses is not within that scope.