President Trump signed his One Big Beautiful Bill into law in early July, in the middle of the biggest poker tournament in the world.
Card players there said they want to royally flush one of its tax provisions down the drain.
"As I walk around the poker tables, I definitely hear it from the players – they're concerned," said World Series of Poker CEO Ty Stewart on the penultimate day of the Las Vegas tournament last week.
The big concern? Tucked into the 940-page bill are a few sentences that prominent poker players and gambling experts say could mean the difference between many players being able to make a living in the industry or not.
"At first, I didn't believe it. And then I read it," said Russell Fox, a poker player who runs a Nevada-based tax firm that specializes in gambling. "It's bad for just about everybody in the industry."
"Nobody thinks it's fair"
For more than five decades, bettors who break even in a year or lose money haven't faced a tax burden. If they won more than they lost throughout the year, they paid taxes on their profits.
The new law, which goes into effect next year, upends that, making losses only 90 percent deductible. That means a person could make $100,000 in tournaments and lose $100,000, yet still owe taxes on $10,000 of income.
That taxable income expands quite a bit when the margins are even bigger, since professionals competing in high-stakes tournaments can easily have wins and losses of millions of dollars in any given year.
Even bettors who don't see any yearly profits could still end up owing thousands to the IRS.
"This is just a completely illogical bill. You're taxing people who lose money," said Daniel Negreanu, a well-known poker player, who spoke to NPR while playing at the WSOP. "We don't mind paying taxes, but like, on actual money. Nobody thinks it's fair to pay taxes when you lose money."
Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., told NPR her office has gotten more constituent outrage about the bill's gambling provisions than about many other higher profile changes.
"We've gotten more response to this than we did for anything about Medicaid or food stamps," said Titus, whose district includes part of Las Vegas. "It hurts players of all kinds, professional or recreational."
The provision also applies to sports betting and other gambling, although in all cases it will affect people who play at the highest stakes the most.
Fox, the tax expert, said "the math may stop working" for some players who currently make a living gambling.
"If you are playing very high buy-in tournaments and your margin is effectively low because you're playing against the world's best players, what's the point in playing those tournaments when the government's going to dock you 10 percent?" he asked.
Anger builds in Vegas
The top players in poker are universally panning the new tax provision.
Scott Seiver, last year's World Series of Poker player of the year, told NPR it would be "devastating to most, if not all, of American poker."
"There's something beautiful and I consider very distinctly American about the concept of … you are your own business and at a poker table everyone is equal," Seiver said. "There's something really American about those values of the meritocracy that I feel Capitol Hill wants to believe in, that I would love for them to defend."
Some players are even working back channels to try to effect change in Washington.
"A few days ago, Ted Cruz texted me and said, 'hey, we apologize for getting this in there,'" said Phil Hellmuth, a poker pro who has won the most WSOP bracelets in history.
Hellmuth has taken to calling the provision "poker's death tax" and said he's hoping Congress finds a way to change course.
Sen. Cruz, R-Texas, is cosponsoring a bill to return to the policy of "taxing people on what they actually made."
"I don't know of anyone in the Senate who opposes fixing it on the merits," Cruz told NPR. "Nobody is defending this as a sensible tax policy. I think it was a mistake that it was included, and I'm hopeful we'll correct that mistake."
There were also rumors swirling at the tournament that Negreanu is planning to talk to President Trump about players' concerns. When asked by NPR, he chuckled.
"We have contacts to, you know, powerful people in Washington," Negreanu said in between hands. "Sometimes these bills pass and people don't even know what's in them. And in this case, I don't think they really thought this one through."
How did this end up in the bill in the first place?
The provision seemed to catch lawmakers and the gambling industry by surprise. The deduction change wasn't in the original House version of the bill; it came via the Senate Finance Committee.
Amanda Critchfield, a spokesperson for the committee, said in order to comply with the rules of reconciliation, the budget process Senate Republicans used to pass the bill, the number had to be modified in order to create a budgetary impact and avoid running afoul of the Byrd rule.
Critchfield told NPR the committee did not hear any concerns from gaming associations about the lowering of the threshold until after the bill was passed.
"[Committee Chairman] Sen. [Mike] Crapo is open to receiving feedback from affected stakeholders and learning more about industry reporting and compliance," she said in a statement.
The American Gaming Association sent a memo in May to the committee laying out its priorities for Trump's signature bill, urging Congress to maintain gamblers' right to deduct all losses from their winnings. After the bill's passage, the association said it would work with lawmakers to address the changes in deduction losses.
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the change in policy would increase revenue by nearly $1.1 billion over the next decade.
"It's not like it's zillions of dollars which is going to save the nation," says Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev. "To you and me, $1.1 billion is a lot of money. But in the overall scheme of what we're doing here, it's like – this isn't going to make anybody a hero."
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecasts the bill as a whole will increase the federal deficit by $3.4 trillion over the next decade.
Congress going back to the table
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., already tried unsuccessfully to reverse the provision in a Senate maneuver requiring unanimous consent.
"It will do irreparable harm to our country's gaming industry if it takes effect," she argued on the Senate floor. "It will move major events that drive our economy offshore, push wagering into illegal markets, and it could punish tourists who come to Vegas to win big."
In addition to Senate efforts, Amodei and Titus are pushing a House bill that would restore the 100 percent deduction.
Amodei said the new provision incentivizes dishonesty when it comes to reporting wins and losses.
"Frankly, you want people reporting everything on both sides of the ledger," he said. "They're going to find a way not to pay income tax on income they didn't really have."
He added there's a misconception that this only affects big gambling states.
"When you start talking about lottery and horse racing, there's a majority of states in the nation that now have gaming. It's not Nevada and New Jersey anymore," he said.
Copyright 2025 NPR
