A New Ireland Gambling Tax to Be Added Soon

October 21, 2014 by

Ireland Gambling TaxA lot of countries in Europe and other parts of the world have been dealing with something recently that has been sort of a loophole for a long time. The basic idea is that companies that operate outside of a country’s jurisdiction typically can’t be charged for taxes, but the problem is that they’re making revenues from that country’s players. A new Ireland gambling tax bill for online play is being introduced soon in an attempt to get a piece of those revenues with estimates of as much as €25 million in new revenues that could be earned each year.

Why the New Ireland Gambling Tax Makes Sense

The basic way this has worked in other countries is that you have two groups of companies that offer gambling services to players. One type operates within the country and is licensed and pays taxes while the second type operates freely from outside of the country without an in-country license and without having to pay certain taxes because of that license. This is a bit of a disadvantage for the companies that are inside of a country like Ireland, and this bill aims to increase revenues while also creating a fair playing field.

Criticism of the New Bill

In bills like this, there’s been a bit of criticism involving the way the tax levels are structured. In the United Kingdom, for example, they recently made some similar tax changes that forced a lot of smaller companies out of the country. While it wasn’t the exact same scenario, Ireland has to be careful to avoid doing that in their own country if they want to keep from alienating the companies that have been faithfully paying taxes for a long time.

Overall, it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens in Ireland and what happens to Ireland-based online gambling due to these changes in tax law. There are no particulars available yet except that they want to tap into the €1.6 billion in bets that Irish players make on companies based outside of the country.

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