A measure to restore the full federal tax deduction on gambling losses advanced out of the House Ways and Means Committee, giving Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., an opening to press House leadership for a floor vote before the end of the year.
The committee approved the fix Wednesday after attaching it to H.R. 10357, the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act. Titus, who has led the effort since introducing the bipartisan FAIR BET Act on July 7, 2025, said the timing now matters.
“After 14 months of fighting to get this commonsense, bipartisan fix through committee, we must now encourage the House to approve this measure before Jan. 1, 2027,” Titus said. “This would stop the reduction to 90 percent from taking effect and ensure gamblers across the nation do not pay this tax on phantom money they never won.”
Origins of the 90% cap
The reduced deduction traces back to the One Big Beautiful Bill, the tax-and-spending law President Donald Trump signed on July 4, 2025, which cut the gambling loss deduction from 100% to 90%. Titus was the first member of Congress to raise objections to the change and has pursued a legislative fix ever since.
“Altering the tax code was a ruse in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill at the expense of recreational and professional gamblers,” Titus said. “As I have said many times, it must be fixed.”
A slow road through committee
Titus raised the issue publicly at a Ways and Means Committee field hearing in Las Vegas in July 2025 and followed up with letters urging the committee to attach the fix to a broader package. She said no movement occurred until this week’s vote, which lands just as the House prepares to leave session until after the election.
“I am disappointed it took the House committee so long to take action,” Titus said. “I spoke at a Ways and Means Committee field hearing in Las Vegas in July 2025 to bring the consequences of reducing the deduction to their attention.”
“Over the next several months, I wrote letters to the committee urging it to include the fix in an upcoming package. Nothing happened until now, when the House will be out of session until after the election. The Republican House leadership must bring this provision to the floor, and the Senate must also expeditiously pass it if we are to prevent the tax from taking effect and harming gamblers nationwide,” she added.
An earlier attempt to fix the deduction failed in January, when the House Rules Committee declined to advance an amendment to an appropriations bill carrying the change. That effort was one of nearly 70 amendments introduced at the time.
Industry and senate support lines up
The FAIR BET Act — formally House Resolution 4304, the Fair Accounting for Income Realized from Betting Earnings Taxation Act — carries 25 co-sponsors. Backers include the American Gaming Association, MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment, Wynn Resorts Ltd., DraftKings, FanDuel, the Nevada Resort Association and the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. Titus’s office also pointed to a wave of support from gamblers on social media.
On the Senate side, Nevada Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto and Jackie Rosen have co-sponsored a companion measure, the FULL HOUSE Act (Facilitating Useful Loss Limitations to Help Our Unique Service Economy Act), alongside Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Passage in the House would not close the matter. The Senate would still need to approve its own version, and Trump would need to sign any final legislation before the 90% cap is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2027.