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# Congress Stalls Gambling Loss Deduction Repeal Three Times
- URL: https://www.igamingnews.biz/gambling-loss-deduction-repeal-congress-stalled/
- Published: 2026-09-15T07:34:21.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T07:36:24.000Z
- Description: Congress has blocked repeal of the 90% gambling loss deduction cap three times since July 2025, and no legislative vehicle remains this year to fix it.
- Author: iGamingNews Editorial Desk
- Tags: Analysis, US Gambling Tax, Regulation

*Image credit: illustration, iGamingNews Editorial Desk. Source: Congress.gov bill records and member press releases. Never imply stock depicts the actual event.*

**Congress has now blocked three separate attempts to repeal the 90% cap on gambling loss deductions since July 2025, and no legislative vehicle to fix it remains on the calendar this year.** A Senate unanimous consent request died in July 2025\. A House Rules Committee amendment died in January 2026\. A second House push died three weeks later. The cap took effect January 1, 2026, and stands.

**The number that drives the whole fight is 10.** That is the share of documented gambling losses a bettor can no longer deduct against winnings, down from 100%, under a provision buried in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that President Trump signed July 4, 2025\. A bettor who wins $500,000 and loses $500,000 in a year, a break-even outcome, now owes federal tax on $50,000 of income that never existed. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the 90% limit raises $1.14 billion in federal revenue through 2034, according to Americans for Tax Reform's summary of the bill sponsors' figures.

## The repeal effort has bipartisan support and still cannot move

The gambling loss deduction repeal is unusual in Washington for having almost no organized opposition. The Senate companion bill, S. 2230, was introduced by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) on July 9, 2025 with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as an original co-sponsor, according to the bill's official status record on govinfo.gov. Its House counterpart, the FULL HOUSE Act (H.R. 6985), was reintroduced January 14, 2026 by Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) and Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV). A parallel bill, Rep. Dina Titus's (D-NV) FAIR BET Act, drew ten co-sponsors and, according to CDC Gaming, backing from Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and tribal gaming interests.

None of that support has produced a vote. Here is the sequence:

- **July 10, 2025:** Cortez Masto asked the Senate for unanimous consent to pass her bill on the floor. Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) objected, not over the gambling provision itself but because he wanted Democrats to first restore an unrelated endowment-tax exemption benefiting the University of Notre Dame in his home state, Roll Call reported. Young said on the floor he agreed the gambling fix was fair; he blocked it anyway.
- **Late August through January 2026:** Titus filed the FAIR BET Act as an amendment to the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, a strategy meant to ride a must-pass bill past committee gridlock. The House Rules Committee declined to make it in order, so the amendment never reached the floor, CDC Gaming reported.
- **January 23, 2026:** A second attempt to attach the fix, also flagged in House floor proceedings that month, failed to advance, according to CPA Practice Advisor's coverage of the vote.

Three tries, three different vehicles, the same outcome. Cortez Masto called the result a tax that leaves gamblers "literally paying taxes on money they don't have." Titus said after the NDAA rejection that "there will be other opportunities this year to insert the language into another piece of legislation for consideration on the House floor," and that she would "pursue those opportunities until we get this done."

## Why a fix nobody opposes still cannot pass

The mechanics explain the paralysis better than the politics do. Each attempt has been a rider, not a standalone vote, because the bill's sponsors know a $1.14 billion revenue cost needs an offset or a forgiving vehicle to clear the Senate's budget rules. Riders are hostage to whatever else is attached to the same bill, which is exactly what killed the July 2025 attempt: an unrelated dispute over a Catholic university's tax exemption, not the merits of the gambling provision, sank it. The NDAA attempt failed on a Rules Committee gatekeeping decision that had nothing to do with gambling policy either. A popular, cheap, bipartisan fix keeps losing to the traffic on the road it is trying to travel.

For operators, the practical read is that the 90% cap should now be modeled as durable for at least the 2026 tax year and likely beyond, not as a temporary irritant awaiting correction. That matters most for the high-volume, thin-margin segment: professional sports bettors, advantage players and daily fantasy grinders who churn large sums for small net returns. A 10% disallowance on turnover-heavy play can turn a marginal winning year into a net tax loss, which is the population most likely to reduce play, shift toward jurisdictions with no equivalent state-level exposure, or move activity to offshore books outside the reach of US reporting. That is a channelization risk regulators have spent years trying to close in the other direction.

Sportsbooks courting high-value players now have to talk to them about aftertax math, not just odds and promotions, a shift already visible in how operators are rethinking VIP retention. Affiliates and tax preparers serving bettors face a second straight filing season explaining phantom income to clients who broke even and still owe. Neither constituency has a bill left to point to. The next opening is whatever tax or spending package moves before the 2026 midterms, and Titus's team has already signaled it will try again.

## A fix nobody opposes just keeps losing to procedure

The gambling loss deduction repeal has cleared the argument stage. Sponsors from both parties, a state governor, tribal gaming interests and the industry's own lobby agree the 90% cap taxes activity rather than income. What it has not cleared is a floor vote, three times over, for reasons that had nothing to do with gambling. Until a bill sponsor finds a vehicle immune to unrelated riders and committee gatekeeping, the cap is not a glitch awaiting correction. It is the baseline the industry now has to plan around.