Why Are Win/Loss Statements Inaccurate?

It’s tax time. In this digital era, why are win/loss statements inaccurate?

For this answer, we're happy to reprint the reason from Tax Help for Gamblers 4th Edition (updated in early 2019), by Jean Scott and her co-authors.

"Win/loss statements from casinos at the end of the year are valuable as supporting evidence of play, but many tax-court decisions have upheld the IRS position that they don’t substitute for a gambling log.

"For one thing, in the case of machine play, they cover only the time you play with your players club card inserted. Many people don’t ever use a card or use it sporadically.

"In the case of table play, you need to give your name to the pit boss and ask to be rated (something many players don’t do) to be sure that the casino keeps any records of your wins and losses; in addition, these are only human estimates (and will remain so until table games are computerized, which has been done in a few places and will become more common within a few years).

"Furthermore, casino win/loss statements vary greatly in accuracy and completeness, because there’s no standard form for the casino to use. Some forms for machine players are quite detailed if the casino has a good computer-tracking system, giving the exact time and win/loss figure for each day of the year you played a machine with your players card at their casino. Others merely give a total yearly win/loss figure and sometimes this is only an estimate based on theoretical machine hold, rather than your actual wins or losses. Still others may give you your lifetime total, rather than just one for the past year.

"Many statements are notoriously inaccurate and incomplete, often not counting hand-pays and/or W-2G jackpots, but not making that fact known. A few we [Jean and Brad] get match our own records fairly closely; most seem to have little relationship to our own extremely detailed records."

It’s tax time. In this digital era, why are win/loss statements inaccurate?

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Comments

Dave Mar-09-2020

But ...

If the records are so unreliable, why do casinos value that data so much and base so much of their reward/loyalty system on that data?

Jackie Mar-09-2020

@Dave

First of all Dave reread the answer, it is all the information the casino has to go on.  So IF you consistently use your players card in slots and "check in" to every table game then your rating would be more accurate.

Kevin Lewis Mar-09-2020

It no longers matters either way

With Trump (in effect) destroying itemized deductions and the ongoing IRS policy of win, we want some, lose, don't come crying to us, the win/loss form could say you won a stable of winged horses and it wouldn't make any difference insofar as how much they're going to gouge you. Just make up a totally specious "log" showing that you lost several hundred thousand and on the remote chance that the IRS asks you why that doesn't agree with your win/loss statements, just say that the losses were during untracked play.

Question of the Day - 09 March 2020

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