With the economic climate still trying to recover, your winnings from your casino outings or online casino games can go a long way to building up your savings account. Some online casinos as a result of their bonuses provide the best online poker sites for money and as you can try before you play, it means you can fine-tune your poker skills before going on to the live tables. However, there is some vital information that you might not have known, and that is the fact that both your winnings and losses are tax deductible. This means you are required to notify the relevant authorities about your yearly taxes. Although at the moment, you might be either in a panic or confused, the following guide should aid you in ensuring that you don’t find yourself in a problematic tax evasion situation.
Up or down, write it down!
Whether you are up or down after going to a casino or playing online, you need to make a note of every win and loss. This process will help you to keep track of how successful your casino outings are, as well as reminding you of those magical winning moments. More importantly, this will put you on the right track to providing all the relevant information to the tax authorities. The tax authorities require a written note of your wins and losses as these are deducted from your total winnings at the end of each financial year. This is also true even if you only go to the casino or play online occasionally and you will need to make a note of any winnings up to and above £20.
In your log of winnings and losses you should also write down the date, the form of gambling such as card games or sports betting, the details of where you placed the bets and who you were playing against, vitally important especially in high stake poker games. Hold on to any evidence as well such as, receipts, cancelled bets and any correspondence from the casino that relates to your wins or losses.
Taking off your losses
Trying to remember those times you lost is often more difficult than remembering your big wins or the times you were down one moment and flying high the next, and it is times like these that make the casino and online games such adrenaline pumping fun. The losses you do have are important for taxation reasons as the amount of the deductions you make to the tax authorities cannot be greater than your overall winnings. For example, an easier way to look at this is if you made £5,000 winnings in 1 year but lost £10,000, you would only be able to make a tax deduction on the £5,000 winnings. The left over losses of £5,000 will be carried over to the next financial year or used to write off any other deductible incomes you may be claiming.
Making a note of your winnings and losses and all your gambling activity is important as it is not enough to merely deduct your losses from your winnings, producing a single figure. It is therefore vital and might have come as a bit of a surprise, but you should remember that you do actually need to pay tax on your online gaming winnings.