Our best sports betting sites have produced plenty of winners since joining the legal sports betting markets from coast to coast. While they’ve been required to meet strict state regulations to pay taxes to needy local and state coffers, many bettors have avoided claiming their taxes with the IRS. 

A report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released at the end of September suggests that over a billion dollars could still be collected from unreported wagering income. 

The details 

The report covers a period from 2018 to 2020 and focuses on Forms W-2G, Certain Gambling Winnings. It found that 148,908 individuals who were issued the form for gambling winnings over $15,000 did not file a return. 

Further analysis showed that government could have potentially increase tax revenue by upward of $1.4 billion by addressing the non-filers. 

They also discovered that hundreds of Forms W-2G did not include Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TIN), so the income was unable to be traced to the recipient.

Recommendations

The report recommended five points to the Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, including:

• Begin appropriate enforcement for non-filers with gambling winnings from 2018-2020
• Review non-filers from 2018-2022 who had not been identified previously by the system
• Analyze forms with missing TIN to determine point of noncompliance
• Expand wager codes to specifically include sports betting
• Conduct an environmental scan of current and potential future conditions of sports betting and online gambling industries

With the exception of tracking the TIN to determine what forms of wagering or gambling institutions may be noncompliant, the IRS agreed with the recommendations. However, it only partially agreed to look into expanding wagering codes.