As long as you are not playing as a "pro" then there are no taxes. The lottery is not taxed. BUT if you are playing as a way of making income, it is no longer "Glucksspiel" (Gambling)

But as I stated above, it is a grey area and I have spoken with 2 tax advisers, and they didnt know exactly what the deal is. They both said that if someone makes a regular income, and their main income is from poker, they will have to pay taxes since it is no longer a recreational activity, but more of a job. Exactly where the line is drawn is not clear, however.

Just the tax company's way to milk you if you are doing well.....

if germany follows this, more european puppet countries will follow.

i wonder who will play on pokerstars anymore..indians and argentinistas?

So what does that mean for players that live in Schleswig-Holstein, will they be able to play on?
I cant make any sense out of these articles, sorry.
An answer would be greatly appreciated.

yea me too, all I understood from this news is that online poker will be illegal in Germany as of March but it's always been illegal, so idk where is the change really

They tried to ban online poker in Slovakia but the bill was scrapped after the EU Commission criticized it.

there is no change everything just stays the same sadly poker will still be "gray illegal zone" in germany... I hoped for regulation.
But who knows what these stupid politicians will do in the future.... blocking germans from accessing certain parts of the interent wil also not happen. Something like in italy or france, wont happen. Although i would love to be in a EU playerpool with France, Italy, Germany etc cant you bribe some politicans stars pls
In the future i also hope there will be an EU playerpool, we are almost at the bottom atm in the poker world it can only go upwards from now on.

there wont be any regulation about online-poker at 1. march.
they just regulate sports-betting by giving out licenses.
first of all they wanted to regulate all online-gambling by taking 20% taxes on the net-profit
gained by german players on the any gambling site.

now they said poker wont be "legalized".
still we will play. its like weed. its always there.

finally, german politicians are, at an average, just as idiotic as everywhere else.
millions will still play online-poker, the sites wont pay a cent
and everything will be the same that it has been since ages, first of all.

they talked about banning illegal sites,...
they did not even get it done with child-porn sites. that says it all.

during the time that schleswig-holstein (1/16 german states) wanted to regulate poker,
they clearly pointed out that it wont be german only site.
it would have been .com as usual for all players.
of course this is the right way to go.
pokerstars can easily count the amount of rake each player paid,
then they subtract the fpp and reload bonuses and have the rake-$ that each player generated.
and thats what germany was aiming for, 20% of that money, which is reasonable, imo.
and due to the fact that they clearly announced that it wont be like in france or italy,
there is no way for stars to let the german players pay more rake on the .com site.

i think the last part is what it will be like in (very rough guess) 6 month - 3 years.
they cant just leave poker behind, while they promote lotto and take their % of slots
which are in every pub and "casino", how the shady small gambling-halls call themselves.

Does anyone understand if the other states can ban their people from playing on the Schleswig-Holstein sites?

I don't think they can ban their people from playing from any sites. this article seems to be based on a 'spiegel' article and suggests that providers won't have to ban anyone: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01...al_in_germany/

i was wrong, itll be like it is in denmark as far as i understood it.

If playing poker as a pro is seen as a normal job by the german authorities, you should be able to take your poker losses into account as well.
Also every other expense that is related to your poker playing (i.e. computer, internet costs, travelling, even special wear) could add losses to the tax declaration.

There are several precendences in other areas that make this very unlikely. The tax authorities will usually consider any activity that is not a traditional job as recreational if you taking losses on it and therefore ineligible for tax deductions.