* New law comes into effect within six months.
* No indication that player pools will be segregated.
* A sliding tax rate of 15%-30% could be prohibitively expensive for many operators.
* Costs will likely be passed onto poker players in the form of reduced rewards.
* Strong player protection measures including segregation of player funds.

http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-dep...ers-need-know/

winter is coming

the players won't be taxed, right ?

Correct. The income tax code has also been amended so that players won't be taxed on winnings.

So no tax to players, if player pool doesnt get segregated this is good right?

My choice to pursue my poker career will most likely be taking place in Portugal or Malta. I love the idea of players not having to worry about paying tax on their winnings. What will most likely happen is that the operators will charge some ridiculous withdrawal fee and reduce loyalty rewards drastically. That being said, it will most likely be similar to paying tax on your winnings anyway. So if we dont need to pay tax at the cost of less rewarding benefits, Im all for it!! Would be great if someone could fill in more on this topic and keep us updated.

its still too early to talk about the 'drawings' of this law that has been approved and will be implemented within 180 days, at least in regards to poker. I watched the 'discussion' on the parliament and they have not even talked about poker, they are concerned about sports betting which represents the biggest slice of the money moving in the Portuguese 'market'.

many doubts still remain, closed or shared player pool, the real % of the taxation and how cuts will be applied on both the costumer and service provider.

as for a Portuguese guy i have to say that the way things work here is very shady at least, Santa Casa wanted the monopoly and they are trying to 'make a stand' in court of law. Casinos are not happy with this either, they know it will be bad for business as they are losing costumers to online platforms and thus eliminating their long rule of the gaming industry in this country along with Santa Casa.

Im going to expect high taxation, would love to stay in my country, we will see how it turns out very soon.

i don't understand how the law can be approved and no one has any idea of that questions regarding tax, player pool, etc !?

The taxation is all laid out in the law - Article 83 for poker and casino games online.

The rate is 15% to 30% depending on revenues - expect all the major sites to be paying 30%.

That's a tough rate to make a profit at, any margin over 20% is good for an online poker company, so unless that can be ramped up to 30%, the operator will make a loss.

VIP benefits will probably be scaled back, and some sites may impose extra charges - we'll just have to see what happens in practise.

There is nothing in the law to restrict the player pool to Portugal - although your site must have a dot-PT address, you should be playing in the dot-com player pool.

What can we expect from this law being approved? Only a reduction in VIP rewards? Is there anyway to get around this?(ex:having a bank account outside of portugal or an account created on another country?)

If the pool is .com, and if the rake is so, and the bigger sites split the costs with players, then the maybe 5% rake needs to be about 6% as 15% tax of that leaves about 5%. To 50% vip the increase to 6% means an extra 0.5% rake, dropping him to a relative 40% vip, under the 5% rake.

I can see how tournament rake can be increased for Portuguese players playing in the dot com pool - I find it hard to see how the cash game rake can be increased.

PokerStars has shown that it can operate in places like Denmark and Belgium with a 20% gaming tax. VIP benefits are reduced, but players are in the main dot-com pool.

The difference between 20% and 30% gaming tax is probably equivalent to 70%-100% of their profits.

Achieving profitability in the Portuguese market may be down to using their poker brand to attract players to their sportsbook and casino business.

You can look from the web pages of the regulated countries of how much the decrease is, e.g. i looked the stars bulgarian vip pages and saw the decrease with 15% tax as far as i have seen, is 1/10th lower rb.

With the trick that one needs to play 10% more hands to get eg. to supernova, at point one still wins the same rb in dollars but it needs 10% of more hands played.

As rb percentage it means a drop from eg. 40% to 36%. The percentages are written on vip pages. This means about 10% of hands one plays with no rb, compared to .com. So, those two things, the 10th drop and the 10th increase, where if one plays that many hands anyway, means just the 10th decrease.

Does this mean that VIP benefits will be reduced for all players across the world playing on a specific site (or only on those whose account is in the country levying the tax)?

PokerStars.PT will likely have lower VIP benefits. Portuguese players in Portugal will have to play on PokerStars.PT. Everyone on dot-com, dot-eu etc, would be unaffected.

(all speculation of course, but it's how it worked with belgium, bulgaria, etc, so makes sense).

Playing there as a tourist, stars must have an answer to that, though national laws have their spoon in it. I would expect one cant play there as a tourist until its okay with portugal and stars has a code allowing any country to play from anywhere with his own software and account in spite of the ISP, at least for 90 days. No country limitations needed even for spanish etc. players. Though at this point i expect it not being possible, even to play there, thats then funny as this isnt a new thing at all.

the big question still to be answered is if we are going to be a closed market (segregated) or an open market (global pool, as far as "global" stands nowadays).

as for taxes to players it seems that will be none.

other questions are also relevant and need to be adressed but those are the major ones imho.

what is mostly freaking me out is that the government did not gave any dates for when it will be implemented, neither stars the time-line of these changes.
I hope to have at least one month notice so we can plan about it.

Theoretically it's 180 days after the bill was approved by parliament.

why you say that?

Similar thing coming in the UK. PS said even though we log in to PS.co.uk, its playing against everything else in the world.

I'm guessing that having to log into PS UK or PS PT is there way of tracking the player base who these new rules apply to and that we will be unable to log into PS.Com

30% tax? Italy has 20%, gross i guess and if i remember right, their rake is 5.7% at stars to cap of 3e, and supernova gets rb of 28%. The only good there is that rb is more euros and in euros, as are the games, while its tax free up to 10ke as far as i read, meaning a pension for heavy winners, no player tax for others. Even if they pool some year, the vips would be small if they still insist on what looks like 30% tax.

For comparision, bulgaria and denmark are 15% and with normal stars rake at .com pool, and supernova gets 32 or 34% as continuing, while non regulated stars sites get the 37% max. The silver and gold levels at these are like 17 and 20%, rather than non regulated 24% in about both levels, as continuing, plus only 4.8% rake and 2.8d cap, meaning a decent rb w any volume of play. Its some 10th drop w rb at sn level and more below but not a major worry.

The portugal case however can become another italy and ones best bet then in portugal might be to play some smaller site or skin w good rb, or move in brazil maybe, though unclear regulation, come back on pension. Its mediterranean and cheap in south brazil near sea, though some bit extra moist, but some distance from heavy center it should be no bother.

The 180 day figure was widely reported by gaming law firms e.g. https://www.lexology.com/library/det...e-fa13db05b619

And if your Portuguese is up to it, you can see the 180 day figure is given in the law itself in Article 12.

http://app.parlamento.pt/webutils/do...oc&Inline=true

The period starts wef 19 June 2014

The reason 30% tax is tough is that the very best online poker businesses generate a profit margin of up to 40%, excluding regulatory compliance costs and gambling taxes.

Most get nowhere near this figure.

Set tax at 30%, and only a few can risk entering the market and expect to make a profit--and even then the profit would be low single figures.

Since license applicants have to deposit Euro 500,000 with the regulator to secure player balances - and pay chunky application fees as well, the process effectively excludes small sites from getting licenses.

Cross subsidizing a small online poker room from profits made in the sportsbetting market is not going to be possible either--on a $100 sports bet, the operator will pick up a gaming tax liability of up to $16.

Unless that changes, it's hard to see any offshore operators wanting to get a sportsbetting license - they can't make an average of $16 profit on each $100 bet.

IMO, Portuguese players will largely ignore the licensed market and play at offshore sites licensed elsewhere.

after regulation we will only have acess to the main.com players pool via stars.pt.

this is mandatory.

Government - in the person of their tourism secretary of state; has said that it will be implemented in the end of the current year/start of 2015.