Topic: Why paying tax on gambling winnings when government doesn't regulate Gambling? - page 4. (Read 1023 times)

Yes, this is how the gambling winnings are taxed. As long as you keep the winning amount in the casino and withdraw it to an online wallet, you do not need to pay the taxes in regions where gambling and crypto are not regulated. But as soon as you convert that crypto into your local currency, the money lands into your bank account and you have to play the tax on that money. So this can be called an "indirect tax". Secondly sometimes you may have to justify the authorities the source of that income if the amount converted into fiat is considerably high.
For example, I know people who had to face legal actions when they tell or disclose that this is crypto money or gambling money (and gambling was prohibited in the country).

On this forum, some accusations of casino  not  paying players have been rectified and some cases are majorly the fault of the players and not the casino.
I believe that if any casino is licensed in a country, the right authority will assist the player to fight the casino if maybe the player have actually won a huge amount and the casino refuses to pay him but some online casino are operating without obtaining license from some country that there gateway is allowed.

One way they tax gamblers is during withdrawals, and the tax is based on a certain percentage of their withdrawals. Sometimes the casino takes the charge directly from the winning of the gambler. It may look small but cumulatively from all gamblers around the world, it becomes a huge amount of money. Now they give the government the specific amount agreed between them at a given time. It could be daily tax, monthly or yearly.

What is the essence of regulation if the government cannot speak for their citizens using the casino platform? Although if such a thing happens the casino refuses to pay gamblers their earned money then what the government can do is to prevent the casino from operating in the country. Meanwhile any money there will not be returned.

If as far as you know every time you win you always pay taxes, but when you report a problem to your casino and the authorities refuse to provide assistance, don't you need to find out if you are being cheated all this time by the casino or if the authorities in your place are rotten? because as far as I know, if you have paid taxes, then the authorities will help you with various problems that you may face when gambling, because the role of the authorities is to regulate casinos that are under their jurisdiction, and therefore you pay taxes - if the authorities do not help you, then what is the point of you paying taxes to them.

Like you said, it can be good, it can be bad. It can be good in the sense that if they put taxation, they should also make a regulation that casinos have to be registered. I mean, they have to be a registered business that has a monthly income stream to pay tax, which means illegal casinos won't be taking advantage of small children, they won't be ripping people off, rigging the game, they will be forced to move. And at least people will be aware that,  such casino does not pay tax, they are hiding from government, means they are illegal so people go to the one that is legal.

Which means, if a casino that is registered and pays tax, withholds a gambler's huge win, probably because they didn't see it coming that someone was going to win huge, it can involve a court case, and it can actually be treated as a proper court case. Most times, this kind of case with gamblers and casinos are not being treated properly because the government says it is not a business they recognize or is not registered under them.

So now, if the taxation will lead to a casino registering themselves, it means such cases will reduce because you know it can be taken to court, you can be sued, that can be a good thing.

Then also bad, because this is a game people play for fun. If casinos have to increase their price and you know, restructure their system, the way that you barely win because they are paying tax, like the amount of win even on low stakes, become so low, it means people might withdraw from gambling to a point.

It might help people to reduce their addiction, but it might affect the gambling industry too. It might just affect the fun of sports betting and all of that. But I hope the method being put is not just for the benefit of the government but citizens are taken into consideration too.

Nobody can escape taxation; if you're living in a third-world country, expect to be taxed on everything you purchase and everything you do. By theory, the government has an obligation to its people to serve their interests, and if your government can't do that, then you have a corrupt government, and if you know that your government acts like that, then only play at casinos with a license and a good reputation, so you will not bother yourself by complaining to the government, which is futile to do.

I have no problem with taxation on gambling businesses. They owe it to the government and the government in turn owes it to her citizens to ensure that the taxes are use for civil good. This is the premise on which I believe that there should be taxation on gambling businesses. Also just like the case in brasil, taxing gambling businesses also have other positive benefits too such as those illegal gambling businesses will move out of the country. Those illegal gambling businesses are the places that encourages underaged gambling. If we look at it another way, we'd see that the governemnt is using taxation as regulation and the indirect effect is that illegal gamling will reduce and in turn a decrease in gambling addiction.

It's not just the government's duty to care for the addicts, the community and society where there cohabit also have a role to play in engaging compulsive gamblers to change for good. However, implementing taxes on casinos is as the result of funds generated in the business. Although, it's not being utilized in gambling legalized countries, but that's not enough reason to wait on them to act before helping problematic players.

Preferably, it should be a combined effort, the government help's in needed, thereby reducing the cost of caring for addicts, and also limit such urge from happening.

It's grey area, they have the right to tax your winnings and they have the right to freeze your money too because you're gambling in unregulated casinos.

Make sure to use international exchange (no KYC P2P even better) over local exchange because government is easier to ask personal credentials from local exchange. Since the key is to avoid paying gambling tax, you need to report your gain from somewhere else, says side gigs or something like that. You still pay income tax, but at least it's cheaper than paying tax from gambling.

This is civilized behavior, to follow the laws and pay your taxes, but I assure you that no one will hesitate to use a guaranteed method to avoid paying taxes to the state. Especially since these solutions exist and are usually used by those who receive small amounts and avoid losing them in the form of taxes. Large amounts can also be split and sold directly as crypto on the black market. In this way, the person will avoid accountability for his activities from the authorities, will not have to pay taxes or bank transfer fees, and will sell the money at the black market price, which is more than the trading price. Don't you think these are not enough temptations for anyone to think about cheating the system?

The same reason they started imposing on cryptocurrency when they never wanted it
The benefit.
They can't see a cake and not want their cut.
The thing is for the government to receive tax from a casino
Then it would be strictly regulated and the likelihood of them adhering to proper gambling regulations are high.

I do not think there would be countries that will tax lost bet.

Let me make an example for you. If you are using a gambling site and you are losing $200, and then you win $100. Your winning will not be taxed until you win in total more than $200 that you have lost.

But above all I still do not like the fact that gambling is taxed, but most gamblers are not paying tax because they are winning small amount of money while most gambling are losing if their profit and loss are calculated. So government collecting tax from bettors is not as it is in the way we are thinking about it. Only those that won huge amount of money are targeted.

But nonetheless, I prefer those countries like Australia and Canada that do not tax gambling.

I don't know how casinos operate in your country but the place I'm from, casinos operate on high moral grounds. The regulated casinos that pays tax to government needs to satisfy the rules placed by the government, the largest complaint they get is not checking IDs properly for minors. They even provide pick up and drop off service to gamblers and transfer the money to the bank if they want. That's on legal ones. The illegal ones and the small gambling games too foucs on fairness and user experience as they are more closely linked to society.
There are ocassional complain from drunk gamblers but most of the time its delusional claims after loss.

It's absurd to even fathom the idea of taxing gamblers, like who does that, so are they taxing you only win you win your bet or they will also tax you when you lose your bet. If as a country you want to tax the bet companies based on the fact that their business is situated in your country hence the need to pay tax, then that's understandable but wanting to tax private individuals on their bet is something I really find amazing. So this is like taxing both bet company and the individual at the same time.

If a government refuse to check complains of consumers concerning a particular bet company, especially when there are cases of refusal to pay customers the money they've won, sighting that they don't have a control over the bet companies, then that's insensitivity on their own part as a government, as it's the responsibility of the government to checkmate this bet companies else the company will go rogue.

They may not know we are gambling and let's say we gamble on crypto casino so we could withdraw as crypto but when we want to convert those crypto into fiat ever then it will become headache cause all those funds came to our banks are recorded and reported to tax agencies and they might not even ask anything if the amount involved is small but if there's every big transaction coming to our bank then it might be flagged for review and by that time all the TXs in the account might come in for question.

Whether the casino the gamblers are using is licensed or not, the government doesn't really care about the gamblers, they only care about what they will get from gambling activities. It is now left for us gamblers to choose to protect ourselves by ourselves. A gambler who cares so much about his safety, knowing fully well that if he encounters any issue in the future, will not get any assurance from the government, should ensure he gambles only with casinos or other gambling platforms that have good reputation and positive reviews from other gamblers. The decision to settle with a particular casino should not only be because the casino is licensed.

With reputable casinos, gamblers can channel their grievances to the casinos which helps assure them of a fair treatment from the casinos even while still paying an unfair levy imposed on them by the government.

Is that a valid reason? If the government really cares about gamblers and is afraid they will fall into gambling addiction. They just need to ask the casino to put in place some regulations like daily deposit limits, instead of taxing gamblers more. Most gamblers lose, they rarely win so it would be unfair if they lost 10 times but only won once and had to pay extra taxes.

I am not against the government taxing but clearly taxing gamblers is unfair and shows the greed of the government.


You are right, if they really want to tax gamblers then we have no way to fight them, they are still the ones who control this world and we cannot get rid of them.

It seems fair if you’re winning. But the problem is they take taxes every time you win, even if you’re not really making a profit overall.
Like, if you gamble for a whole week, lose for six days, and win just one day, you still have to pay taxes on that win. It feels like a burden. But they’re the authority, and they always think they’re right.

I think it’s on us to pay, since they can’t collect if they don’t know we’re gambling. Like, if we’re using casinos that aren’t even in our country, and we can still access them, they really have no clue. But if we want to be law-abiding, we’ll pay willingly. But then, is that really the right thing to do?

Well, let's liken this to the recent developments after Binance p2p was banned in Nigeria, the federal government seeing they really can not stop Nigerians from doing crypto, decided to work with kucoin exchange to impose a 7 percent fee as tax on all the trade made by Nigerians, meanwhile, the government has not lifted the crypto ban In the country and subsequently, have not also started regulating crypto, yet they are imposing tax on crypto traders - this is very similar to what you are talking about.

But then, let me point out that on few occasions that I am aware, gamblers who won good amount from casino, and the casino refused to pay have taken the matter to court, and the court after investigating the issue, have most of the time ordered the casino to pay up the player or face some serious sactions.

Gambling is not regulated in the country thats for sure, but those who know their way around still can get good justice when a casino try to cheat them, but all the same, we should understand that most government of the world only care about one thing, and that is their pockets, all they are interested in is looking for means to earn and keep earning more and more money.

Not recently, this has been happening since long time ago. It has been happening since many years ago. I read about the recent 5% tax in telecommunication, gaming, gambling, lotteries, and betting activities in Nigeria recently. 5% tax is good but this should be after calculating the overall profit and loss of the gambler.

The gambling site is not licensed. The first thing I check about a gambling site is to know if the gambling site is licensed or not. I can not gamble on unlicensed gambling sites.