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President Trump's tax and spending law has a provision that's causing an uproar in a place you might not expect - the world of professional poker. NPR congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt traveled to Las Vegas and brings us this report.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Let's shuffle up and deal.
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BARBARA SPRUNT, BYLINE: The final table is getting underway for the World Series of Poker main event. TV cameras are craning to get the best shots in a sparkling room lined with large photos of past winners. This place is filled with poker superstars working to take home more than $93 million in total prize money.
TY STEWART: This is the Super Bowl of poker, or a lot of people may say this is the Olympics of poker.
SPRUNT: That's World Series of Poker CEO, Ty Stewart. We're some 2,400 miles away from D.C, but he says, unlike in Vegas, what recently happened on Capitol Hill certainly didn't stay on Capitol Hill.
STEWART: I mean, as I walk around the poker tables, I definitely hear it from the players. The players are concerned. I think it was a surprise.
SPRUNT: That surprise - a few lines folded into President Trump's signature legislation that Congress passed earlier this month. For more than five decades, gamblers who won more than they lost throughout the year would only pay taxes on their profits. This new provision of the law, which goes into effect next year, upends that, making losses only 90% deductible.
RUSSELL FOX: First, I didn't believe it. And then I read it. And it's bad for just about everybody in the industry.
SPRUNT: That's Russell Fox, a Nevada-based tax professional whose firm specializes in gambling. But what's this change actually mean for people? Buckle up for some math. Say you've got a professional gambler who wins $100,000 in a year, has 80 grand of gambling losses and 20 grand of business expenses. He breaks even, he pays nothing. In 2026, with the exact same numbers...
FOX: He will owe tax on $10,000 of phantom income.
SPRUNT: And this isn't just for poker players. It applies to sports betting and other gambling, too. Fox says casual gamblers will be affected if they're itemizing their losses, but it's the high-stakes players who will be hurt the most.
FOX: What's the point in playing those tournaments when the government's going to dock you 10%? The math may stop working for some of these players.
SPRUNT: And here in Vegas, rumors are swirling among players in the room that one of the biggest names in poker, Daniel Negreanu, is going to take their concerns straight to President Trump. In between hands, I asked him about it.
DANIEL NEGREANU: A lot of rumors get out, don't they?
SPRUNT: Is that something that you would like to do?
NEGREANU: We - I have - we have contacts to, you know, powerful people in Washington. And I think ultimately what's most important is for them to actually - 'cause 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.
SPRUNT: He calls it an illogical bill.
NEGREANU: Taxing people who lose money - like, you're taxing zero income. Like, we don't mind paying taxes but, like, on actual money (laughter). Nobody thinks it's fair to pay taxes when you lose money.
SPRUNT: Another major player, Phil Hellmuth, has a nickname for it...
PHIL HELLMUTH: Poker's death tax.
SPRUNT: But he's hoping friends in high places will make things right.
HELLMUTH: A few days ago, Ted Cruz texted me and said, hey, we apologize for getting this in there.
SPRUNT: The next day, back in D.C., Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, tells me he's co-sponsoring a bill to get things back to the way they used to be.
TED CRUZ: It fixes what was clearly a mistake, and it was a mistake that virtually nobody in the Senate, when we were voting on it, had seen. I don't know of anyone in the Senate who opposes fixing it on the merit.
SPRUNT: The language came from the Senate Finance Committee. Its spokesperson said the change happened because they needed to make sure every provision created a budgetary effect in order to comply with the rules of a process called reconciliation. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the change would increase revenue by nearly $1.1 billion over the next decade.
MARK AMODEI: It's not like it's zillions of dollars which is going to save the nation.
SPRUNT: That's Republican Congressman Mark Amodei of Nevada. He says the provision incentivizes dishonesty when it comes to reporting wins and losses.
AMODEI: Frankly, you want people reporting everything on both sides of the ledger, but it's like, they're going to find a way not to pay income tax on income they didn't really have.
SPRUNT: He's co-sponsoring a House bill to address it, alongside fellow Nevada member Dina Titus, a Democrat.
DINA TITUS: We've gotten more response to this than we did for anything about Medicaid or food stamps.
SPRUNT: She says beyond being unfair to players, the shift impacts the broader economy.
TITUS: That's going to send you overseas. It's going to send you to the predictions market. And I think it hurts the industry because, you know, people who come to play poker, they spend money on shows and shopping and things like that.
SPRUNT: Getting a standalone bill passed in the House these days is a tall order, even with bipartisan support. But this is one of the only times when poker players actually want the House to win.
Barbara Sprunt, NPR News, Las Vegas.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE GAMBLER")
KENNY ROGERS: (Singing) You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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