Guide to Taxes for California-based Game Shows

Disclaimer: While I am a weird person who likes and studies taxes for fun, I am not a tax professional. Please check with a tax pro if you need specific advice. 

Welcome to my game show tax guide! I've met a lot of people in the last year who have won things on game shows (congrats!!) and hopefully this will help you determine what taxes you must file and pay. A couple of key points:

• As implied by the title, this guide is for game shows that tape in California. The concepts should be similar for game shows that tape in other states, but you will have to check with those states for the details.
• This is only for US citizens. I don't know enough about foreign taxes to make a guide for non-US citizens who win something on a US game show.
• When I say "winnings," I'm only referring to the winnings you actually kept. You do not have to report or pay taxes on prizes you turned down.
• All references to specific forms, schedules, and lines are based on 2023 forms (i.e. the return you fill out in early 2024). They could move to different places in other years.
• I'm assuming you lived in one state for all of 2023. Part year residency situations are beyond the scope of this guide.

Overview of returns to fill out:

Here are the returns you'll have to fill out, based on where you lived in 2023 (or whatever year you won things on the game show):

• If you lived in California, you only have to fill out two returns: a federal return and a CA resident return.
• If you lived outside CA in a state that doesn't have income taxes, then you need to fill out two returns: a federal return and a CA non-resident return.
• If you lived outside CA in a state that does have income taxes, then you need to fill out three forms: a federal return, a CA non-resident return, and a standard resident return for whatever state you lived in.

To start: No matter where you live, and whether you do taxes by hand or by software, you should start by filling out your federal 1040.

Federal taxes

If you won $600 or more, you will receive a 1099-MISC form from your game show that shows how much you won. You don't have to attach this form to your 1040 as the game show will send the IRS a copy of it. If you won less than $600, you probably won't get such a form. You still must report and pay taxes on your winnings. All income is taxable, whether the source of the income reported it to the IRS or not. 

The amount you won is considered "ordinary income," meaning it's taxed the same as if you earned it at a job, interest on a bank account, or anything else that's taxable at a normal rate. However, do note you don't have to pay Social Security or Medicare tax on your game show winnings.

If you do taxes yourself, you must report your winnings on Schedule 1, line 8i ("Prizes and Awards.")

If you use tax software to do your taxes, then look in your software for an "other income" or an "unusual income" section and input the amount you won from the game show in the prizes and awards field. I personally don't use tax software, so I don't know exactly where to look in any specific program.

State taxes if you live in California

If you live in California, then you didn't have any taxes taken out on your winnings in advance. You should fill things out in this order:

1. Start by doing your federal tax form, including your game show winnings as explained above.
2. Then complete your CA return. There's really no more complexity than normal, because your winnings were included in your federal tax calculations, and thus they will be automatically "transferred" to your CA return as income there. Fill out your CA return as normal; you will likely owe taxes because you haven't paid them yet on the prizes you won.

State taxes if you don't live in California

If you don't live in CA, you should fill things out in this order:

1. Start by doing your federal tax form, including your game show winnings as explained above.
2. Fill out a CA non-resident tax return. Even if you didn't win enough to have estimated CA tax taken out of your winnings, CA still wants to know about your winnings and take taxes on them. More details are provided below.
3. If your state has income taxes, fill out your state income tax return third. You should be able to get a credit for at least some of the taxes you paid to CA. Some details are below.

Details on the CA non-resident tax return.

Hoo boy. If you fill it out yourself, this has at least two parts: first, fill out CA form 540NR schedule CA, then fill out CA form 540NR. Both can be found by going to this website:

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/search/

and search for form "540NR" (without the quotes):

The two forms you need are highlighted below:

Note that you'll need to provide your e-mail address to get schedule CA. You should get the form within seconds after you provide it. I don't know why they do that, but they do. Also note you may need some other forms if you had capital gains or other situations you can find by looking at those results.

As mentioned, start with schedule CA. In essence, you will be transferring your income line by line from your federal tax to column A (the left most column), and then stating in column E (the right most column) how much of that money came from CA. If you didn't live in CA and your only CA based income is from the game show, then column E should remain empty except for the prizes and awards section. Here's an example with made up numbers:

Notice column E is blank except for the game show winnings. Also notice the "subtractions and additions" columns--for each column, you'll need to look up whether federal law differs from CA law in terms of how the money is taxed. Usually it's no different, but you can check on the CA website (search for "CA FTB conformity" [without the quotes] for details.)

After schedule CA is done, fill out form 540NR. This is a pretty straightforward form (by US tax standards); just follow the instructions, transferring the data from schedule CA where appropriate. The only catch is whether you had estimated taxes taken out of your winnings. If you won $1500 or more, then CA required you to pay 7% of your winnings in estimated tax, either by taking it out of the cash you won or, if you didn't win enough cash, making you send a check or similar to the game show before you could get your prizes. This 7% is probably above what you actually owe, so you'll likely get money back from CA in that case (I got about 2/3 of my payment back). In any event, you either have received or will receive a form 592-B that indicates exactly how much you won and how much was taken out. The key part of that form is part IV:

That amount goes into form 540NR, line 83:

Again, if you won less than $1500, you didn't make any tax pre-payment, you won't get a 592-B form, and line 83 should remain blank. 

The rest of the form is math. But after you're done filling that form out, you might not be done yet...

Claiming credit in your home state

If you live in a state that taxes your income, then the last step is to fill out your state's income tax form, and you can likely get credit for some or all of the taxes you had to pay in California. Every state is different in the details, but look for a section about taxes paid to another state. For example, in Utah, this is done on a separate form that looks like this:

Don't be surprised if, weeks or months after filing, you get a letter from your home state asking you to send in your CA return. It's nothing to be scared of, just send in your CA return to prove you paid the taxes to them you claim you paid.

Conclusion

Game show taxes aren't easy, but they are doable. I haven't used tax software to do taxes when game show winnings were involved, but if you have, please let me know how it went! Any questions/corrections/etc. are more than welcome. Thanks for reading!