How to Request Your Royal Caribbean Win/Loss Statement for Taxes

You can get your Royal Caribbean win/loss statement online through the Club Royale portal on the Casino Royale section of royalcaribbean.com. There is no paper form. Statements for a calendar year become available on or after January 31 of the following year, and the system holds the past five years of tracked casino activity.¹ Because gambling winnings are fully taxable whether or not you received a W-2G, the statement is a useful reference at tax time.²

Requesting the Statement

Start from Royal Caribbean’s FAQ page and follow the link to the Club Royale statements portal. From there you request and later download the statement.¹ Have your booking details ready and know which calendar year you want covered. Because the portal reaches back five years, older sailings you never pulled data on are still retrievable.

What the Statement Covers and What It Leaves Out

The figures come from activity tracked through your SeaPass card. Only play where you inserted or tapped the card at a slot machine, or handed it to a dealer at a table, will appear.¹ Sessions where you forgot the card are invisible to the system.

Several categories are excluded outright:

Promotional play, including tournament entry fees, FreePlay credits, and Rewards Point redemptions.
Untracked games, such as Texas Hold’em poker tables and any machines that don’t accept a SeaPass card.
Hand-paid W-2G jackpots are folded into the net win/loss total on the statement, but you already have a separate tax document for those.

Royal Caribbean states plainly that the statement “does not constitute a complete and accurate accounting record of gaming activity.”¹ Treat it as one piece of your records, not the whole picture.

How It Differs From a W-2G

The two documents are often confused. A W-2G is an official IRS form the casino files with the government when winnings from a single event meet the reporting threshold, which is $2,000 for calendar year 2026 payments. You receive a copy and the IRS receives a copy.³ A win/loss statement is not filed with the IRS and is not an official tax document.¹

The W-2G is also where federal withholding shows up. When winnings minus the wager exceed $5,000 from sources like sweepstakes, wagering pools, lotteries, or sports betting, the payer withholds 24% for federal taxes.³ The win/loss statement has no withholding function. It is an informational summary for your own records.

Reporting Winnings and Deducting Losses

All gambling winnings go on your federal return, including amounts that never triggered a W-2G. Report the full total on Schedule 1 (Form 1040) as other income.² You cannot net losses against winnings and report only the difference; the IRS wants the gross figure as income, with losses claimed separately.

Losses are deductible only if you itemize on Schedule A. Take the standard deduction and you get no tax benefit from your losses.² Casual cruise gamblers are often surprised by this: a $3,000 jackpot doesn’t get erased by $4,000 in slot losses if you aren’t itemizing. The full $3,000 stays taxable.

Report losses as “Other Itemized Deductions” on Schedule A, keeping the amount at or below the gambling income you reported on Schedule 1 and applying the new 90% limitation below.⁴

The 90% Cap Starting in 2026

For tax years beginning after December 31, 2025, amended Section 165(d) lets you deduct only 90% of your wagering losses, and that reduced amount still cannot exceed your gambling winnings.⁵ Under prior law the cap was 100% of losses up to winnings. The definition of “losses from wagering transactions” now also picks up related expenses such as travel and lodging tied to gambling, folding those into the same cap.

A quick example. If you won $10,000 and lost $9,000, you can now deduct $8,100 (90% of $9,000) rather than the full $9,000. When losses exceed winnings, the winnings ceiling still binds first: $12,000 in losses against $10,000 in winnings gives 90% of $12,000 = $10,800, capped down to $10,000.

Records to Keep Alongside the Statement

The IRS expects more than a single summary from the cruise line. To support a loss deduction, keep receipts, tickets, statements, or a diary showing both winnings and losses.² A gambling diary you keep as you go carries more weight than one reconstructed at tax time.

For each session onboard, note the date, the type of game, the name of the ship, and amounts won and lost. Save any SeaPass transaction receipts from the casino cage, and hold any W-2G forms issued during the sailing with your tax records. The win/loss statement fills gaps for tracked play; the diary and supporting documents make the record defensible.

Penalties for Underreporting

Skipping gambling winnings on your return, or padding your losses, can bring a penalty on top of the extra tax. Section 6662 imposes a 20% penalty on the underpayment when there is a substantial understatement of income tax.⁶ For an individual, an understatement is substantial when it exceeds the greater of 10% of the correct tax or $5,000.

The penalty doesn’t require fraud; negligence or careless disregard of the rules is enough. Gambling at sea doesn’t hide the paper trail: the ship’s casino issues W-2G forms for qualifying jackpots and reports them to the IRS the same way a land-based casino does. Pulling the win/loss statement each January is a low-effort way to keep your return consistent with what the IRS already has on file.

1
Royal Caribbean. Where Can I Request a Win/Loss Statement?
2
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 419, Gambling Income and Losses
3
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms W-2G and 5754 (Rev. January 2026)
4
Internal Revenue Service. Five Important Tips on Gambling Income and Losses
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 165 – Losses
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6662 – Imposition of Accuracy-Related Penalty on Underpayments