IRS Form 5754 for Gambling Winnings: Parts I and II, TINs, and Filing

If you collected a jackpot that belongs to more than one person, IRS Form 5754 is how you tell the casino, lottery office, or other payer to put each winner’s share on their own W-2G instead of dumping the whole amount onto you. To fill out Form 5754 for gambling winnings, put your own information in Part I as the person who physically received the payout, then list every actual winner in Part II with their name, address, taxpayer identification number, and exact share of both the winnings and the federal tax withheld. Sign it, and hand it to the payer. It does not go to the IRS.¹

When You Need the Form

Form 5754 is required if you receive gambling winnings either for someone else or as part of a group of two or more people sharing the payout.¹ Common situations:

An office lottery pool where one person bought the tickets and redeems the prize for the group.
Friends who split a slot pull, poker buy-in, or sports bet and send one person to the window.
A trustee, guardian, or other representative collecting winnings that belong to someone else.

If you are the sole winner and collected the money yourself, you do not use this form. The payer just issues a W-2G in your name and you report it on your return. Form 5754 also only comes into play when the payout is large enough to generate a W-2G in the first place; for the 2026 calendar year, that threshold starts at $2,000 and adjusts for inflation each year.²

Part I: The Person Who Received the Winnings

Part I identifies you, the person who physically picked up the money. Enter your full name, your residential address, and your taxpayer identification number, which for most people is a Social Security number. That tells the payer who the original transaction ran through so it can be traced back if questions come up later.

If you are also one of the true winners, you do not stop here. You will appear again in Part II alongside everyone else, with your own share listed.

Part II: Every Actual Winner

Part II is the substance of the form. For each person entitled to a piece of the payout, including yourself if you are one of them, provide:

Full legal name
Complete residential address
Social Security number or individual taxpayer identification number
Exact dollar amount of that person’s share of the winnings
That person’s share of the federal income tax withheld

The numbers have to reconcile. Every winner’s share of the winnings, added together, must equal the total payout. Every winner’s share of the withholding, added together, must equal the total withheld. If those totals do not line up with what the payer already has on record, expect the form to come back for correction, which delays the W-2G forms and can create matching problems with the IRS later.¹

How you split the money is up to the group, but the split has to reflect actual ownership of the wager, not a gift you decided to hand out afterward. Equal thirds, unequal percentages tied to how much each person put in, whatever the arrangement was, put it in writing among yourselves before you fill anything in.

Getting the TINs Right the First Time

Every winner listed has to provide a correct taxpayer identification number. If any person in your group cannot or will not provide one, the payer applies 24% backup withholding to that person’s share. That is automatic. When regular gambling withholding already applies to the payout, backup withholding does not stack on top of it, but a missing or wrong TIN will still trigger IRS mismatch notices months down the line.³

Collect Social Security numbers and confirm the spelling of every legal name before you go to redeem the prize. One transposed digit is enough to cause a problem that follows someone into the next tax year.

Signing and Delivering the Form

The form is signed under penalties of perjury, certifying that the information about the actual owners is accurate. Only the person who received the winnings is required to sign, though having each listed winner also sign or provide written confirmation of their share is worth doing for your own records.

Give the completed form directly to the payer. Not to the IRS.¹ The payer uses it to prepare individual W-2G forms for each listed winner. Payers can issue those W-2Gs immediately or wait until January 31 of the following year, so getting the form to them promptly keeps things moving.

Casinos and lottery offices deal with this regularly and most have a process for it, but they cannot issue split W-2Gs until they have your completed form. Walk in with the names, addresses, and TINs already gathered.

Why Timing Matters

Skip this form and the full jackpot lands on a single W-2G with your name on it. You then owe income tax on the entire amount, including the share you handed to other people. Distributing that money to friends without documentation that they were co-owners from the start can look to the IRS like you made gifts, which brings its own reporting problems.

Fixing this after the fact is not guaranteed. Some payers will accept a late Form 5754 and issue corrected W-2Gs. Others treat the window as closed once the original W-2G has been filed with the IRS. When corrected forms are not possible, the person named on the original W-2G may end up reporting the full amount and hoping the other winners report their shares on their own returns, which invites scrutiny because the IRS sees one person reporting less than the W-2G shows. Completing Form 5754 before the payer finalizes the paperwork is the way this stays clean.

What Happens Next for Each Winner

Once the payer processes your Form 5754, each actual winner receives a W-2G showing only their allocated share of the winnings and the withholding. Each winner reports their gambling income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), Line 8b.⁴ All gambling income is taxable whether or not a W-2G is issued.⁵

The federal tax withheld from each person’s share flows through to their Form 1040 as a credit. If the 24% withheld is more than they owe for the year, they get the difference back. If their effective rate is higher, they pay the balance at filing time.

State and local boxes on the W-2G work the same way. When the payer splits the federal amounts, the state and local winnings and withholding should be allocated in the same proportions.⁶ State rules on gambling income vary, so each winner should check both their state of residence and the state where the winnings were collected.

One boundary worth naming: if any winner in your group is a non-resident alien, the payer has to apply a different withholding rate to that person’s share, and treaty rules may change what actually gets kept. Form 5754 still handles the split, but the person collecting should flag any non-resident winner to the payer at the window so the correct rate is applied on the spot rather than chased down through a refund claim later.⁷

1
Internal Revenue Service. Form 5754 – Statement by Person(s) Receiving Gambling Winnings
2
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms W-2G and 5754 (01/2026)
3
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms W-2G and 5754
4
Internal Revenue Service. Schedule 1 (Form 1040)
5
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 419 Gambling Income and Losses
6
Internal Revenue Service. Form W-2G (Rev. January 2026)
7
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 515 (2026), Withholding of Tax on Nonresident Aliens