What You Can Actually Do About This

If you've read anything we've published in the last two weeks, you know the problem. The IRS counts every winning bet as income. Losses are only deductible if you itemize. The OBBBA caps that deduction at 90% starting TY2026. The math hits break-even bettors hardest.

You probably also know that being angry about a broken rule and knowing what to do about it are two different things.

Here's what you can actually do.

The bill that fixes this

The FAIR BET Act — H.R. 4304, 119th Congress — does two things:

Repeals the OBBBA's 90% gambling loss deduction cap, restoring full deductibility for itemizers
Includes structural reforms to how gambling income is reported so recreational bettors aren't trapped by phantom-income math that was designed for a different era

It has 25 co-sponsors across both parties. The bill's text is public. The problem it solves is real. It is not a fringe proposal.

It is sitting in House Ways and Means, and the committee chair hasn't scheduled it for a vote.

Why it's stuck — and how it gets unstuck

Committee chairs control which bills move. A chair who doesn't want a bill to move can simply not schedule it. That's not corruption — it's how the process works. And it's a process that responds to one specific pressure: constituent volume.

When a member's office sees a significant number of verified constituents behind a bill, the political calculus shifts. "My district cares about this" outweighs "the chair prefers we don't."

There's also a procedural workaround in play. Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), the bill's lead sponsor, filed a Discharge Petition — a mechanism that lets the full House force a floor vote if 218 members sign. That's the live lever right now. It moves when constituent pressure makes the political cost of not signing higher than the cost of signing.

What signing the petition does

When you sign at fairbetact.com, you're not sending a form email into the void. Your name, state, and wagering profile become part of the constituent record we build by district. When we prepare outreach to your House member's office, we cite verified constituents — not projections, not lobbying estimates. Real people with real tax exposure, organized by district.

We don't need everyone. We need enough people in enough districts that the members on House Ways and Means can't look their constituents in the eye and pretend this doesn't affect them.

The three-minute version of what to do next

Sign the petition at fairbetact.com if you haven't yet.
Share this with one bettor you know. Not a mass blast — one specific person who you know has been on sportsbooks this year.
If you're willing to go one step further: share your story. The more detailed your profile, the more useful your data is when we're talking to Congressional staff. Even a few sentences about your experience is enough.

That's it. No call to your member required (though we'll make it easy when the time comes). No political affiliation. Just your name on a record that says: I'm a real person in your district, and this law affects me.

The phantom income problem existed before the OBBBA. The OBBBA made it worse. The FAIR BET Act fixes both. It has the co-sponsors. It has the mechanism. What it needs is the constituent pressure to clear committee — and that pressure is made of individual people, one name at a time.

You're one of them. Sign the petition: fairbetact.com.

Your bet. Your money. Your fight.