With sports betting becoming legal in Arizona later this week, most future bettors (or perhaps just this writer) are thinking about their can’t-miss parlays and what they are going to do with all their winnings. There's another thing to think about, however, and that's the tax implications.
“Don’t forget you’ve got taxes to think about in this whole venture and you need to make sure you are reporting your winnings and taking advantage of reporting gambling losses to the extent allowable,” said Barry Friefield, a certified public accountant at Epstein Schneider in Scottsdale.
It doesn’t take too much of a good thing before you’ll get a W-2G, a form to report gambling winnings to the IRS, he said.
“Anytime you have winnings over $600 or 300 times your wager, they are going to report it,” Friefield said.
And for the ones who don’t win big bets, but accumulate some winning through a bunch of smaller bets, Friefield said they are supposed to report total gambling earnings over $600 for the year.
