Are office pools, like oscar night pools or superbowl pools illegal? Tehcnically I mean - it could hardly be enforced.
Thanks.
Twiddle
Technically, they are. But it is not enforced, and I bet the police and prosecutors have their own office pools, so they aren’t likely to enforce it.
It’s ok, as long as no money is skimmed off the top. If the pool goes to the winner, that is just a pool and nothing more.
It gets ugly when a percentage goes somewhere. For bingo games and such, they need licenses and what not because there is a ‘house’ running and taking %'s of the money.
I believe I remember hearing or reading last year (or the year before) that pools (under a certain dollar amount) were no longer technically illegal, and as just noted, as long as a % isn’t going somewhere, it’s fine…if it’s like the NCAA Basketball tourney, I could argue that it could be encouraged…I work with 4 women only, and all of them have been intimidated by their husbands participation and their own perceived lack of knowledge etc…so when I got our own office pool going ($3 a piece!!!) they filled out their brackets, everyone instantly had something in common with everyone else and I can state that it brings people more together than anything else…which has nothing to do with your question, sorry.
from the Sacremento Bee:
"…Pools exist in a netherworld of legality, with local law enforcement officials unlikely to get agitated unless an individual putting together a pool rakes off a hefty “administrative fee.”
IRS spokesman Laurie Ruffino, however, said that office pool payouts are required to be reported under miscellaneous income. A failure to report winnings could incur penalties or even jail time…"
As there don’t seem to be any laws that expressly permit or forbid office pools, it’s left to the employer.
I’m in a pretty heavily regulated environment, (FDIC, SEC and Sarbanes-Oxley) so the company has expressly forbidden all forms of gambling, wagering, lotteries and pools. We can’t even join forces to buy a pile of Lotto tickets.
Thanks everyone, appreciate the replies!
I was working on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange during the late 1980’s, while the FBI was running a sting to identify corrupt commodity traders. After the arrests were made, it turned out that one of the undercover FBI agents had won the Super Bowl pool!