Anyone have any experience immigrating to Canada from the US to play poker professionally?

A poker player may be able to apply and successfully get a visa as a skilled labor based on education and past work experience. However, I interested in your ability to remain in the country while income coming solely from poker.

probably not a great time to go through all the hassle to emigrate imo. There was recently a news article about Canadian gov't considering legislation similar to UIGEA, though I'm not sure how much or how immediate of a concern it really is. Also, a professional player is required to pay taxes on his/her winnings here (even though currently the risk of being caught is small).

Basically I think that if your goal is to play poker full-time and have access to all the eurodonks, you are better off to look at UK/Australia/other before Canada.

Very true, also consider some of the central European counries or Scandinavian, standard of living there is much higher than in US.

actually we are not required to pay taxes, just to clear that up.

But I can't drive to Europe.

I've read the tax code, it says that if you derive an income from gambling winnings, you have to pay taxes. How enforced this is, I don't know.

i have been thinking of moving to canada, not so much explicitly to play poker but just for the hell of it and to have a different life experience (i only live like a half hour from canada as it is). for taxes, i'm pretty sure you still have to pay to the US even if you move to canada (at least, your first 30-40k or something is taxable). so yeah if anyone has any info on moving to canada temporarily that would be of interest to me as well.

my vot is thailand

Emigrate.

And the tax advice in this thread is awesome.

qft x 2

Not entirely true. If it's a windfall win, or an occasional win, it's not taxed. But if you're making a living from it, it's taxed.

Again, like someone else said, chances of getting caught are very small, but nonetheless it's on the books

dude this has been mentioned in about every thread for the past two years but I'll bite and say it anyways: you're American so you have to pay taxes on any winnings past the initial 80k to the US govt even if you're in Canada for like 10 years or some stupid amount of time before you can be tax-free, and that's if Canada doesn't for some reason decide to tax poker by then. Oh, and you could skip the 10 years by giving up your US citizenship. I'm not sure it's worth it, unless you don't plan to ever go back for the next 70 years or however much you've got left.

Those Americans who actually have a decent plan about poker are people who travel and play, and due to that can play on Euro-sites (which aren't THAT much fishier to begin with anyway, traveling should be the main goal here and not just getting on party cuz zomg so fishy; it's not. The main reason to play party is for time zones.)

Party poker is zomg fishy.

Whats a eurodonk

european donkey ldo.

the law states you are, but it will never be enforced and it will never hold up in court.

Y'all know its REALLY FREAKIN' COLD up there, right?

Not true, actually there have been numerous articles in the last year detailing how the canadian government has been trying to enforce taxes on money made on internet ventures (ebay is the big one), which includes onlinegamblers.

People saying that gambling income will never be taxed are offering very dangerous advice (unless you live in the UK).

If, for whatever reason, the taxman decides to take a look at you he can ask where any and every penny is coming from.

Even if you succeed in hiding your income if he decides that your lifestyle cannot be explained by your declared income he can deem you to have received income undeclared.

The concept of 'innocent until proved guilty' does not apply to tax law.

Small amounts you can get away with provided there is no paper trail but it is dangerous to hide regular or significant income.

That and prices for things are higher in Canada.

Canada is big

^^^^^^^^^^
Yeah, which allows a climate ranging from "really freakin' cold" to "genuinely polar"

Sigh.

he was talking about england are u talking about england

The thread is about playing poker in Canada. bigtk4, who WireySpinde11 was responding to, has a Canadian city in his location, so I assume he is talking about Canada. What are you talking about, pray tell?