10-12-2017, 05:34 PM
(10-12-2017, 02:52 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I'm going to go out on a limb and say the vast majority of gamblers are middle class.
And unless you are a professional gambler, losses are only allowed to offset gains. Why should anyone pay tax on a $10k jackpot if they lost $20k over several months playing that machine?
Investment income is already taxed once at the corporate level - so that average effect of the double taxation is north of 40%, but of course on the individual tax return it looks like they only paid 20%.
You can deduct expense on rental property (as you should be able to - you're taxed on profits, not gross revenues!). Also, you can depreciate property, but that's just deferred tax as it's recaptured on the gain when sold, and this makes perfect sense from a cash flow perspective as a lot of your profit is converting a mortgage balance into equity.
Things like deductions for race horses and yachts are less about tax breaks to the rich and more about pork to certain states/industries. Those are classic money pits - no one says "gee, I'd really like to throw my money away there so I can deduct 20% of my losses!".
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