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Originally Posted by Hood
I'm not sure I follow. Where in the Nevada regs do they require WTA for attributing rewards for promotions? I'd be interested in reading that.
The opening line of the quote in the OP reads
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The regulations for the Ultimate Poker site stipulate that they have to use the Winner Takes All (WTA) system of rake attribution.
so I took them at their word on it.
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In Denmark, Belgium and Estonia they have international player sharing when, as I understand it, in most cases rake is attributed based on weighted-contributed when declaring what revenue comes from players from these jurisdictions when they pay their taxes.
Glad to hear it
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The same will probably be the case in the UK too, I imagine. I don't see why it would have to be a WTA system for attributing rake from UK customers. The only important things is that there is a parity between the system; PokerStars would be screwed if they had to pay WTA on GGR from UK players, but a WC system for Belgian players, for example. That's where industry consultation comes in; I believe until now its basically left up to the operators to decide how they attribute rake in cash poker games.
I agree they have to have one way of doing it for tax, having two conflicting methods would be a nightmare.
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[I know you're very up on the UK regulations, have you seen anything to suggest this is going to be explicit in the forthcoming POC system?]
I was a bit concerned about the Treasury consultation a year ago, the one they have not yet even published the input to never mind published the rules for POC following on from the consultation...
https://www.gov.uk/government/consul...sumption-basis In that consultation paper they said
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3.20 For person to person games, such as poker, the basis of remote gaming duty will be the amount that is paid by people in the UK as entitlement to use facilities. For example, where a payment is made to a provider of facilities from a centrally held ‘pot’, the provider of facilities will be liable to duty on the proportion of the payment due from customers in the UK. Where a payment is made from an individual player (e.g. the winning player) the provider will be liable to duty if that player is in the UK.
My input to the consultation was that this approach for tournaments was fine but WC would be better for individual pots because of the way tax and thus profits would vary by player location producing the interest in game outcome for th site.
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But if it were all WTA... i don't think it would really provide significant influence. Yes on a pot-by-pot basis the "wrong" playing winning means additional 15% in GGR; but longer term there's probably negligible difference with a WC system. Sure I mean maybe "UK players are looser preflop but go to showdown less than average" might provide slight differences but i don't see it really perverting the game.
It may be that I am being a bit OCD about it but 15% extra for the site depending on player breaks the peer to peer trust model. Reputable sites would no doubt keep it fair but the principle that the site has no interest in who wins would be cracked wide open.
The second issue would be that winning UK players would become less attractive to the site. The model of providing training materials to get more engaged players would have a perverse disincentive in the higher tax location, the potential impact on VIP programmes is also likely to be magnified for high volume UK players. If the UK player gets taxed on WTA but the VIP programme is WC there is a mismatch with the site, the tax impact would be higher for the higher volume winner and so maybe the impact on the VIP programme for UK players would be greater if WTA is used for tax.
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Finally, i don't see see why rake attribution for a rewards program is needs to be the same for rake attribution for declaring country-specific gross gaming revenues. The two could be separate systems.
I agree you could tax by WTA and provide VIP points by WC but this mismatch would make attracting winning players less attractive to the site in higher tax locations so the national VIP programme might get hit disproportionately at the top end in those locations.