I'm having the same problem. What version of Laravel are you running and on what box and PHP version? I myself am running on a homestead-7/PHP-7 set-up. I think with Laravel v5.1.24. Even if I "return true;" from the Policy, it does not work.

I am running Apache 2.4 on Windows with PHP Version 5.6.15, mycrypt enabled and MySQL, and it's Laravel 5.1.23. I tried another tutorial where I got the auth()->user->id and that didn't work either so I'm thinking it's to do with the auth/user object. Unfortunately I am brand new to laravel so don't know how to prove/disprove this... Thinking of going back to Symfony2 but heard Laravel was better + easier to use... Not for me so far I'm afraid! Would love to be proven wrong though!

I can get this to work:

AuthServiceProvider.php:

    public function boot(GateContract $gate)
    {
		$this->registerPolicies($gate);
                $gate->define('delete-project', function($user, $project) {
			return $user->id == $project->user_id;
		});
		
    }

ProjectController.php:

    public function destroy(Request $request, Project $project)
    {
		//$this->authorize('destroy', $project);
		//$project->delete();
		
		if(Gate::allows('delete-project', $project)) {
			$project->delete();
		} else {
			abort(403);
		}
		
                return redirect('/projects');
    }

But the $this->authorize() and use of policies doesn't work...

Okay I got the policies working. I had to add at the top of AuthServiceProvider.php these lines:

use App\Project;
use App\Policies\ProjectPolicy;

...
public function boot(GateContract $gate)
{
        //parent::registerPolicies($gate);		
        $this->registerPolicies($gate);
}

Ah, good find! Works here also now. I see they do do it here: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/authorization#creating-policies Maybe someone should edit the tutorials to explicitly point it out..

Yep I too would appreciate slightly expanded tutorials.