Imagine that you’ve just won $100,000 in a poker tournament. But before you can pocket the cash, the casino swoops in to collect $25,000 to pay Uncle Sam.

That was the worst-case scenario feared by casinos and players after the Internal Revenue Service issued a bulletin last month saying that casinos would be required to withhold 25 percent of poker tournament winnings over $5,000.

The notice sent a shock wave through the poker community, which feared short-circuiting tournament growth in Las Vegas and beyond. Withholding taxes could have devastated legions of professional poker players who require a large cash bankroll to ply their trade, driving them from land-based casinos to offshore Internet competitors that allow players to dodge U.S. tax laws.

Or so everyone feared.

Negotiations between the IRS and the casino industry as recent as last week appear to have yielded the rarest of all outcomes: a win for all parties.

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Recovered from the Poker Players Alliance archive index. This is the archived item as preserved.