Gambling lose write off?

You'll need a gambling win to write off the losses against and ATM withdrawals isn't sufficient evidence. However, you can scavenge the local stores for losing scratchoff tickets and submit those as gambling losses. Makes for a very thick tax filing. You can only write off up to your winnings so the best you can do is avoid paying taxes on your winnings.

JackAce has it completely right.

Losing money gambling is no different than spending the money via some other recreational method.

The money was "income" first and only certain things qualify for write-offs - gambling was recreational for you (unless you are, as JackAce stated, a professional gambler - but then you would already know the answer to this question and wouldn't be asking it on Yahoo), so it's no different than trying to write off vacation expenses (wouldn't we all love to?). Ineligible.

Quite frankly, I'd be ticked if people could write it off (other than the parameters JackAce mentioned). Just because you lost the money, doesn't mean you can omit the income for tax purposes to benefit you.

There are only two ways that you can write off a gambling loss in the US:

- If you had a large win, you can off set your winnings with well documented losses up to the amount of your winnings.

- If you are a professional gambler (which you obviously are not, since you posted this question), it is possible to have a losing year and write off your losses against other earnings. To qualify for this, you have to have claimed "professional gambler" as your profession for several years in your tax filings with a proven track record of profitability.

I believe you can only write them off against gambling winnings (not against regular income). So if you have no gambling winnings for the year than I don't believe the losses are of any use to you.

The IRS will only allow to deduct up to the amount that you won. So if you won $200, for example, you could offset that income by showing that you lost $200, but no more than that. You would only need to be able to prove your losses if you were audited.