Know what you'll be taxed on.
Answers to common questions. Can't find yours? Email us at the bottom of this page.
Because winning and losing sessions are not netted against each other before the deduction is applied. Your winning sessions are income; your losing sessions are an itemized deduction — and from the 2026 tax year that deduction is capped at 90% of your losses. Break even on $50,000 and you are taxed on $5,000 you never kept. W2G Handpay names that figure on the main screen so it doesn't surprise you in April.
Because gambling losses are deductible only on Schedule A. If you take the standard deduction, none of your losing sessions offset your winning ones and every dollar won is taxable. That single answer moves your figure further than anything else you could enter, so the App asks rather than guessing. You can change it at any time at the top of the Tax Year screen.
No. Every figure in W2G Handpay is federal. State income tax is not modelled at all, and several states tax gambling winnings while allowing no deduction for losses — which can make your real position considerably worse than what the App shows. Any state withholding you record is passed through to your export for your preparer, but it does not feed any total. Ask your preparer about your state.
A tax year you haven't reached yet isn't a year you can have a position in, so it isn't offered. It appears on its own the day it starts.
Correct it on the review screen — nothing is saved until you do. Every scan opens that screen deliberately, because text recognition on a carbon-copy form under casino lighting gets things wrong, and these numbers end up on a tax return. Fields the scan could not find are left blank and labelled rather than guessed at.
No, and that is enforced rather than promised. A W-2G shows your SSN in box 9 and identification numbers in boxes 11 and 12. W2G Handpay finds those boxes specifically so it can exclude them from every search. They are never read out, never stored as text, and never appear in an export. The photograph itself still shows them, exactly as the paper does, and stays on your device.
Attach as many W-2Gs to a session as you actually received. Each is filed separately by the payer, even when the session around them ended down.
Yes. Every dollar won is income whether or not a W-2G was issued. A session ground up in small wins counts exactly the same as one jackpot of the same size. Log the session; the reporting threshold only decides whether the casino files a form, not whether you owe tax.
Usually it means a session holding a W-2G has no money in or out recorded, so it reads as a $0 session. Fill those figures in and the warning resolves.
If your records are complete, the gap can be entirely correct — a jackpot inside a session you finished down produces no income under the per-session method. The warning exists because the IRS matches W-2G forms against your return automatically, so it's worth knowing the difference will be questioned, and worth keeping the diary that answers it.
Correct it on the review screen. W2G Handpay picks the largest printed name on the voucher, which is usually the property but can occasionally be an address or a slogan.
Most machines count credits, not dollars. W2G Handpay flags a figure with no currency marker as unitless — multiply it by the machine's denomination before you save it.
On your device, and nowhere else. There is no account, no sign-up, and no server. Your diary is never uploaded. See the Privacy Policy for the full detail.
Your records are included in your iPhone or iCloud backup if you have backup enabled, and restore with the device. If you have no backup, they cannot be recovered — we have no copy. Export your diary periodically if it matters to you.
Yes. The Export tab produces a CSV with the full session diary, the tax summary, the scope limits, and the authority behind every rule applied — written for a tax preparer rather than for you. Photographs of forms and tickets are not currently included in that export.
Only for the optional "Find nearby" venue search and for processing your one-time purchase. Everything else — including reading forms and tickets, and everything in your diary — happens on the device with no network access at all.
Still stuck, found a bug, or a form that scans badly?
handpay-support@skillquestapps.com