To report your gambling losses, you must itemize your income tax deductions on Schedule A. If you claim the Standard Deduction, then you can't reduce your tax by your gambling losses.
The IRS doesn't permit you to subtract your losses from your winnings and report the difference on your tax return. You must report your winnings and losses separately.
Gambling losses would normally be deductible the same way on the California return. An exception would be if your winnings were from California Lottery tickets, the income from which is not taxable on the California return. If that is your situation, and you included the losses as deductions on Schedule A of the Federal return, you would need to adjust the California return to exclude those losses. Otherwise, they will be automatically included with your California deductions.
If you enter gambling losses together with gambling winnings in the Federal section under Income, you should see a screen in the California interview, California Gambling Loss Adjustment, that asks you to enter how much of those losses were California Lottery losses. Enter the amount in the box provided, and they will be removed from your California deductions.
See this TurboTax tips article for more information.
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