Got some money riding on the Super Bowl? You are not alone. Every year the National Football League showdown not only is the big television ratings winner, it also is the biggest gambling day of the year.

Bankrate's 2010 Tax Guide

Many Super Bowl bets are just friendly wagers — a dollar in the office pool or a good-natured bet with your “Who Dat?” neighbor who never gave up on the Saints.

But other NFL fans take the game more seriously and hand over big bucks to bookmakers — legal and not-so-legal.

The economy has taken a toll, even on bettors. In Nevada, betting on sports is big business, and last year, Las Vegas bookies alone reported that Super Bowl wagers dropped more than 11 percent. The $81.5 million bet in Sin City on the 2009 NFL championship was the lowest amount of money wagered on the title game since 2004.

But almost $82 million is nothing to sneeze at. And that’s just a drop in the sports betting bucket. Nevada’s legal sports wagering represents less than 1 percent of all sports betting nationwide. And wager watchers say when it comes to the Super Bowl, billions are bet globally on the sport’s biggest game, legally and otherwise.

All these Super Bowl wagers spotlight a persistent Internal Revenue Service problem: tracking and taxing gambling winnings. It’s a challenge the agency faces daily, because many people don’t realize that gambling winnings, even the illegal payouts, are taxable. Of those who do, a good portion simply choose to ignore the tax law.

Admittedly, the IRS is playing catch-up here. While the U.S. income tax is a 19th century creation, gambling has been around at least since man was able to record his activities. Dice almost identical to those used on today’s gaming tables have been recovered from Egyptian tombs, and the Chinese, Japanese, Greeks and Romans all were known to play games of chance as early as 2300 B.C.

Nowadays, in addition to the well-publicized offerings of Las Vegas, Reno, Nev., and Atlantic City, N.J., betting is commonplace throughout the United States. The choices range from off-track betting parlors to tribal bingo games to riverboat casinos to state-operated lotteries.

Online gambling down, but not out

Then there’s online gambling. In 2005, professional gambling and entertainment research firm Christiansen Capital Advisors estimated that nearly 23 million people gambled on the Internet, with approximately 8 million of those gamblers from the United States. The amount of revenue generated by those betters five years ago: almost $12 billion.

Christiansen estimates that in 2010, online bets will account for more than $24 billion in revenues for the companies taking the electronic wagers.

It’s easy to see why the numbers have grown so much. Type “online gambling” into any Internet search engine and within seconds you’ll have a list of hundreds of thousands of potential gambling sites. This is in spite of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which was passed without much fanfare and signed into law in late 2006 in an effort to restrict U.S. gamblers’ access to these typically foreign-based Web sites. It is now a federal crime for U.S. banks and credit card companies to process Internet-bet payments.

Some companies have curtailed their U.S. betting operations, but in reality the law has had little effect. Online gambling sites and their cyberpatrons are adapting. All online gambling operations now carry a disclaimer alerting visitors that although a wagering site may be operating legally at its location, it may still be illegal for the patron to wager from his or her location.

To get around payment hurdles, some sites have introduced dedicated debit cards and alternative, although circuitous, e-payment and electronic wallet services. It’s a good bet that millions of U.S. customers will be utilizing them Super Bowl Sunday, the biggest global betting day of the year.

Because of the pervasiveness of online wagering, some lawmakers think that rather than trying to keep beating them, it’s time to join — and tax — the online operations.

In the last congressional session, a couple of bills were introduced that would allow the U.S. Treasury Department to license and regulate Internet gambling operators. In return, those cyber-betting parlors would be able to accept bets and wagers from U.S. residents as long as the companies maintained effective protections against underage gambling, compulsive gambling, money laundering and fraud. The online betting firms also would have to abide by prohibitions and restrictions on types of gambling outlawed by states and Indian tribes.

Such legislation is dropped in the hopper periodically, and realistically it’s not going anywhere soon, given the other issues facing Congress. But as Washington, D.C., considers ways to pay for new services without adding to the federal deficit, expect this taxing online betting to pop up again.

So many events, so many bets

Combine all the availability of gambling with Americans’ love of athletics, and betting on sporting events has arguably become the true national pastime. If you want to keep your sports wagering domestic, legal betting on single-game athletic events is allowed only in Nevada.

States with gaming
Commercial casinos Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota
Racetrack casinos Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia
Electronic gaming devices
(e.g., video lotteries, slot machines, bingo or poker games at casinos and/or bars, restaurants or other licensed establishments)
37 states
Tribal gaming
(casinos, bingo, pulltabs, etc.)
29 states
Lotteries 43 states plus the District of Columbia
Parimutuel wagering 40 states
Charitable gaming 47 states plus the District of Columbia
Source: American Gaming Association, National Indian Gaming Association (May 2009 data)

The dollars add up because there are countless ways to get a piece of the action. The Indianapolis Colts entered the week before the game as 5-point favorites over the New Orleans Saints, but wagers won’t be placed just on the eventual winner or loser. You could bet on whether Peyton Manning or Drew Brees will complete a pass first, which receiver will catch that pass, who will rush for the most yardage (team and individual), who will get the first sack, how many sacks there will be. Even who will win the coin toss is open for wagers.

Known as prop bets, short for proposition bets, there are hundreds of unique ways to gamble on the big game. Essentially, if it happens — or could happen — in a game, the Nevada sports book operation will take a bet on it.

But casino bets aren’t a real concern for the IRS. The tax man has a way to track legal athletic wagering.

It’s a dicier tax-collection proposition, however, when it comes to bets placed at increasingly popular offshore sports-betting operations, dollars dropped into friendly office pools and illegal wagers handled by bookies. These bets, according to the American Gaming Association, represent more than 99 percent of all sports betting nationwide. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission estimates that translates to as much as $380 billion annually in illegal wagers.

For whom the tax bells toll

In legal betting operations — state lotteries, casinos and horse racing tracks — taxes are regulated. One of the government agencies that has a say in these operations is the IRS. As soon as the bells go off when someone hits the slots jackpot, a casino representative is on hand to the get winner’s tax information.

In some cases, Uncle Sam even gets his cut (25 percent on most winnings) before you get your payout. That’s the case for winnings of more than $5,000 from any sweepstakes, wagering pool or lottery; withholding also is collected on proceeds that are 300 times or more the amount of the bet. Gambling winnings from bingo, keno and the slots are not generally subject to withholding, but you’re still required to provide your tax ID. If you refuse, the casino can assess backup withholding of your jackpot at a 28 percent rate.

The IRS also started getting reports from poker tournament sponsors when tournament winnings exceeded $5,000. The reporting requirement, aimed at poker tournament sponsors, including casinos, helps the IRS ensure that card game winners are including their winnings on their annual tax returns.

Those poker tourney winnings, along with your jackpots from the casino or horse track or lottery dealer, will be recorded on a Form W-2G showing how much you won and how much, if any, was withheld for federal taxes. And like all other income reporting forms, a copy will go to the IRS.

But there’s a distinction between what’s reportable and what’s taxable.

All gambling winnings — regardless of the amount — are taxable. But it’s ultimately the winner’s responsibility to let the IRS know how much was won, even if the casino doesn’t have to file a W-2G. This reliance on the gambler’s tax-law compliance is where the IRS frequently gets shortchanged.

How tempting is it to assume the IRS won’t miss a small jackpot? Apparently pretty darn appealing.

“On a trip to Vegas, I won $146 at a slot machine,” admits a chagrined economics professor at a church-financed university, “and I didn’t report it on my tax return.”

Making a bad day at the track pay off

The professor’s tax reporting inclination is one shared by many gaming winners, but not all.

IRS analysis of 2007 returns, the latest year for which data are complete, shows more than 1.6 million taxpayers reported almost $27 billion in gambling income. This includes winnings from casinos and horse tracks, lottery and raffle jackpots, as well as the fair market value of cars, houses and other noncash prizes.

As for how many taxpayers didn’t bare all about their betting at tax time, the IRS won’t even venture a guess. “We can’t tell you what we don’t know,” says an IRS representative.

But the IRS has a tax break for conscientious taxpayers who report their gambling income on line 21 of their Form 1040. They can subtract any gambling losses from winnings if they itemize. For many, that’s a good deal. That same 2007 data shows that more than 987,000 gamblers that tax year made their good luck less taxing by claiming almost $19 billion in bad bets.

Losses to reduce gambling winnings don’t have to be from the same game. If you go to the race track every weekend and drop $1,000 but then win $3,000 on the World Series, those losing horse betting slips can reduce the amount of baseball winnings on which you’ll owe tax.

There are a couple of ground rules to keep in mind here. First, you can’t claim more in losses than you won. And, as with any tax deduction, you need to keep records of your losses that will satisfy the IRS if you’re ever audited.

Good records are the best bet

Keeping track of gambling losses as you go through the year is the best bet. That way you won’t have to scramble to reconstruct them if you do hit it big.

Such reconstruction efforts not only are difficult, they also aren’t likely to pass IRS scrutiny. Tax professionals recall a horse race fanatic who went to tax court with bags full of losing betting slips to support his large deduction against his winnings.

It didn’t work; almost every ticket was covered with footsteps of the other bettors who tossed the tickets when their horses didn’t win. He ended up paying the extra tax — and penalties.

“It’s not a tax myth, but it is an old story,” says one retired IRS agent who saw similar actions when he worked for the tax office in Saratoga, N.Y. “And if you don’t have a big win to offset, then the receipts can be your ticket to Gamblers Anonymous.”

<< Back to Bankrate’s 2010 Tax Guide table of contents.