When talking about Brian Christopher, we often get questions about pushing buttons. Or, rather, why it’s Brian who’s always pushing the button, vs. a group pull spinner or even Marco or Raymond on our team:
You always say Raymond or Marco can’t spin otherwise they will have to pay the taxes but surely you’re a limited company and as employees can you not just pay the taxes as a company like sometimes you tell the cashier to give the cash to one of your employees.
Alan J.
Adjacent to this particular question here is about the company and jackpot taxes vs. an individual.
The latter is pretty simple – taxable jackpots can’t be assigned to a business – they only can be assigned to an individual. So when it comes to jackpots, Brian has to claim them all himself. It’s personal income, and he has to navigate that accordingly on his personal taxes. The business can’t claim that for income.
Of course, gambling is a losing sport, so Brian has the ability to write-off losses against the wins, just like anyone who itemizes on their taxes. And Brian has plenty of recorded evidence documenting his overall wins and losses should he need to.
So that means who’s pushing the button is actually quite important, as many casinos have house rules about who is awarded the jackpot. And this can be important if they review the tape, which they can and do at their discretion, to confirm who won the jackpot. A famous incident from Florida underscores the importance of knowing this.
This is also why Brian now pushes the button at group pulls, whereas in earlier videos he didn’t always do so. It ensures he claims the jackpot and the taxes, and also that he’s the one paid out – in theory, in a casino where the rules are whoever pushes the button wins the jackpot, a participant could be paid out the cash and walk away, which wouldn’t leave the other participants feeling all that good about the situation.
So hopefully that helps around your question – ultimately Brian’s just making sure he’s liable for the taxes if a jackpot happens, and that in the case of group pulls, the money will be there to pay everyone out for their share of the return.
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The only document we have are Win/loss statements. Are these good enough?
If you are referring to whether that’s enough for filing your taxes, the IRS says no. Check out this article we wrote about taxes and writing off losses.