The card tracked it — but the IRS wants your diary.

Casino Win/Loss Statements: How to Get Yours and What It Proves

By Slots USA editorial desk Published Updated

Woman using calculator and receipts at home office desk for finance management
Woman using calculator and receipts at home office desk for finance management. Photo: https://kaboompics.com/ / Pexels

The short answer

A win/loss statement is a year-end summary of your tracked play — carded sessions only — that casinos will mail or post on request. It is not an IRS document: it helps reconstruct a gambling diary, but the IRS expects your own contemporaneous records. With the OBBBA's 90% loss-cap arriving in 2026, accurate records matter more than ever.

In this article

Every January, players' club desks field the same request: the annual win/loss statement. It's a summary of coin-in, coin-out and tracked activity across every session where you inserted your card — a useful reconstruction tool for a year of play you didn't log yourself.

What the statement actually shows

  • Tracked play only: cash you played without the card isn't in it — the statement undercounts real activity by exactly how often you forgot to insert it.
  • Casino-by-casino: each property (or corporate family sharing a card) reports only its own numbers — you'll need several for a complete year.
  • It's an estimate, not a ledger: the IRS has consistently held that win/loss statements support but don't replace a contemporaneous gambling diary.

How to get one

Request it at the players club desk or through the casino's online portal — most corporate programs (Caesars Rewards, MGM Rewards, Boyd, Penn) issue annual statements automatically or on request, typically available from late January. You can ask for prior-year statements too; there's no requirement that you request during tax season.

Why 2026 made this matter more

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act caps deductible gambling losses at 90% of winnings starting with 2026 returns — meaning even breakeven players can owe tax on phantom income. That makes documentation the difference between an approximation and an audit problem: keep your own session log (date, game, in/out), and use win/loss statements as the backup record, not the primary one.

Bottom line: order the statements every January for every card you hold — they're free evidence. Just don't confuse the casino's marketing document with the tax record.