I am considering moving to NZ. I am curious if anyone can provide information on the current rules and the prospects of future legislation. From what i have googled, you can play poker there online but it is not explicitly legal like it is in Europe. I have heard rumors of Australia legislation and would like to know if that is in the works in NZ as well. Thanks.

Not sure what you mean by "explicitly legal", there are no laws against it which makes it explicitly legal as far as I can tell. As for the future, I'm no expert or anything but I really doubt anything is going to happen, it's just not really an issue here that people talk about at all.

Anyways our society is far too liberal to let the government do something like tell people they can't play a card game on the internet. I mean I could be totally wrong, I'm just going by my own anecdotal everyday experience, but I dunno, I just can't see it ever happening here.

Do you have to pay taxes on winnings there?

I think technically 'maybe' but generally no for tax, you don't ;d

i don't think it's explicitly legal? but it's def not illegal.. not sure about the stars ban in aus rumours etc and what would happen here but yeah.

ugh not a helpful answer, i know, sry!

The tax thing is kind of an unknown, when I started playing full time I contacted the IRD and they explicitly told me I did not have to pay tax, but apparently other people have gotten different answers. There is definitely no tax on gambling winnings here but it's kind of a grey area whether someone doing it for a living could be considered to be technically running a business or something like that which would bring it under some kind of taxation. But basically the answer is no until the govt decides to clarify that and start cracking down on it or whatever, which will probably be never tbh.

Also I still don't understand what "explicitly legal" means.

It means that there are laws which specifically address internet gambling as there are in Europe. Thanks for the responses.

It is legal to gamble online here. Winnings are tax free too but I'm not 100% what the story is if your a pro but I'm pretty sure you'd be sweet. hardest part would be getting residency I'm guessing.

Yes online poker is definitely legal in New Zealand. Refer Department of Internal Affairs Gambling Act 2003, Fact Sheet #27 (you should be able to google it). This Fact Sheet covers "remote interactive gambling", there is another Fact Sheet about poker, but that is mainly guidelines for pubs running tournaments.

As far as the tax status, see

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4910...x-a-shady-area

for example. It doesn't look like the IRD sees online poker income as causing significant "leakage" from the tax base and there is basically no will to enforce the legislation.

It is hard to get across how much of a non-issue this is politically in New Zealand. There are gaming machines here, but the numbers are capped and I would say that gambling is seen as less of a problem than in Australia. Any anti-gambling sentiment is usually focussed on gaming machines as they are seen as sucking money out of poor communities.

Also relevant: the Auckland casino recently applied for an internet gaming license (not sure if that included poker) but that was emphatically turned down. Since the existing government is looking likely to be re-elected in November the status quo for online poker should remain through to 2014 (not that any other party actually has alternative policies on online poker; no-one has any poker policies).