Australian Tax Office Targets Poker Players!

Anybody who gambles wants to look at this video!

[Note: There’s about 20 seconds removed half-way through because the BBC were absurdly overzealous in a vexatious copyright claim. In unrelated news, if you are British and don’t want to pay your annual BBC licence fee – the link is here:

In an unprecedented decision by Australia’s Administrative Appeals Tribunal that will have major implications for gamblers everywhere, Eddie (Lucky) Tran is being forced to pay millions of dollars in taxes on his poker winnings, after the Australian Tax Office successfully defending the bill in court.

In Australia, gambling winnings is generally supposed to be tax free, but in a decision that runs contrary to established case law, the AAT found that because Mr Tran did not keep adequate records to prove his gambling income, he is liable for millions in back taxes.

This is because, in Australia, the onus is on the person to prove the ATO’s tax assessment is wrong – not the other way around.

In what may well be a catch-22, gamblers are only liable for taxes if they are running it as a business, while the very records demanded by the courts to substantiate gambling income may indeed be what the ATO uses to argue that a business is in operation.
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Tran and Commissioner of Taxation (Taxation) [2025] :

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Contact: [email protected]

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