Can you buy others’ losing lottery tickets to offset gambling winnings?

eric r: Can you buy others’ losing lottery tickets to offset gambling winnings?
Lets say you get lucky on the lottery. Can you collect other people’s losing lottery tickets as “proof” of gambling losses to offset the taxes on what you won?

Answers and Views:

Answer by CaptainSpice
what if they ask for a reciept???

Answer by pdq
You are putting the horse before the cart, and you are delusional.

You are imagining that you are going to make a bunch of money gambling, but it’s just not going to happen.

In the extremely unlikely scenario where you get lucky and hit some sort of jackpot from a slot machine, then you CAN offset that amount with lottery tickets on your tax form. Just hang out at the local convenience store and ask them to set aside some losing tickets. You’d be an idiot to pay for losing tickets.

Again – this is NOT something you’ll need to worry about.

Answer by Poker-For-All.com
No not possible

Answer by AndyAkeko
Even if you collect enough lottery tickets to make a significant dent in your “net profit”, you can expect your tax auditor to ask for some proof of purchase.

Answer by John W
Yes, there’s a market for losing scratchoff tickets because they have very broad dates during which they were sold while draw tickets are for specific dates. However it’s not really practical to offset really big multi-million dollar wins with losing scratchoff tickets. If it’s a few thousand then yes, rummage through the trash bins at your local store for losing tickets.

Answer by opinionated
i know a woman who won big on the horses one year,,really big.
for the rest of the year her and friends picked up all loosing tickets up from the ground and collected for tax purposes.
she got audited.
she brought out her shoe box of losing tickets

auditor told her,it was a legal deduction,but,he had never before seen anyone able to prove it.,,,no proof of purchase required. audit was over.

Answer by FAH-Q
let’s see….”excuse me.may i purchase your losing lottery ticket for a quarter”…..repeat that sentence 400,000 times…if you can, ”you might be a red neck”…