No idea how we landed at the US health care system but this thread is about German gambling law, how providers react to that and players experience. Would be cool if we can keep it that way.

Federal Council approved the changes regarding the taxation of online gambling. focus is on poker and slots.

it seems the go w/ the 5.3% on every game. to my understanding this would mean, that if you buy-in with a full stack on NL100, you get a $94,70 stack. not sure if operators would offer cash games for germany at all.

However, the Bundestag (federal parliament) has to approve, no time line is set.

Source: https://www.pokerfirma.com/news/deut...rsteuer/701749


deep dive

source: https://www.bundesrat.de/SharedDocs/.../209-21(B).pdf


EDIT: this law isn't directly related to the GlüNeuRStV (which is this threads topic)

the GlüNeuRStV was recently signed by Schleswig-Holstein, which was the 13. bundesland to do so (imo 13 of the 16 states had to do so). but the states thought it's a good idea to use this moment, to make a few extra bucks :/

Das ist richtig Bad.


Will this tax be applicated on all Poker Sites or only on the regulated ones?

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The regulated ones likely won't bother applying for a licence. The unregulated ones will be business as usual. These guys are probably thinking 'great, we're going to take so much in tax from this now' when in reality the games aren't even feasible under these circumstances.

So German players go play on sites with less game security and no protections in place. It makes things worse in every way. Is there anything being done by German players to lobby against this?

There's not much we can do right now. The law has to be passed before you can pursue any legal action. It's quite unlikely that any poker site will still operate under this restriction because not one remotely sane person will ever consider just losing 5.3% of the buy-in just by ... well buying in.

This isnt only bad for germans. This is bad for everyone. The regulations in the UK are bad enough. But now germany exits the market? 2 countries that are heavily depositing. GG

Doesn’t make a big difference but as the wording of the law goes the tax is substracted from the buyin before tax. So effective tax rate should be a little less:

(buyin-tax)*0.053=tax
Which would make effective tax rate for the full buyin 0.053/1.053

the poker rooms have to pay those upfront taxes. guess a few will jump thourgh the hoops to be on the market. i guess it's still lucrative since the casino and sportsbook verticals


ah, thx ... makes much more sense

But only the regulated ones thst ACT in the EU, right?

I can't See a room Like Acr pay for this **** lol

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yes ... 'black market' operators will get some traffic ... so mission 'player protection' accomplished

maybe even GGP won't care. party and stars are tied up with the big companies, so no room for them

OK, Ty for the explanation.
I guess the Most will BE moving to private Clubs on Apps Like U Poker and similar. They are exploding right now.

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So if you have to get more money onto the table because you lost a pot and only have like 50bb remaining you will lose another 5,3%?

Yes. It's called player protection man, look it up.

The biggest lol about this "player protection" is that it must result in players remaining at the table for hours/days/weeks or until they lose their buyin.

Yup. It's so incredibly stupid, I can't even put it into words. Basically it would favour putting in longer cash game sessions since everytime you leave your seat and rejoin, you're taxed.

Is it once again reasonable to assume that who ever sat together to make that a law about online poker, never asked anyone who is actually playing online poker if the law would make sense

Another question:
In FF poker. Technicaly I think for every hand you leave the table and get together with completely new people from the same pool. So if they are really crazy they could have to pay 5.3% every hand

I think its very possible that they did it on purpose. They might know exactly how outrageous those demands are and that no operator will actually fullfill them and instead leave the german market altogether. Its not really a regulation, its a death sentence for online poker. In the end their plans dont really matter. Its unstoppable and even if people will successfully fight this law in front of court it will take years. And one year in online poker is more like a decade these days. Remember that the gambling monoply in germany was technically ruled unconstitutional as early as 2006 and nothing was done about it for more than a decade.

[QUOTE=YourMother66;56997791]Is it once again reasonable to assume that who ever sat together to make that a law about online poker, never asked anyone who is actually playing online poker if the law would make sense

The guy put in charge of the newly created french gambling regulation a few year back said in in first declaration :"it's impossible to win money at poker" ... And by the time he got a bit of knowledge about the industry he was fired (or choose to go to an other place where he got 0 knowledge).

The transition to a regulated market was horrible but now things are ok now (a lot of improvement could still be made)

nah, i doubt that. I assume they have no clue how cashgame works. They saw that in tournament poker you have to pay entry fee, which is a fixed amount and easy to calculate for tax. Not the case in cashgame so they "fixed" that.

regarding cash games ... it would be pretty forward to 'just' tax your stack when you buy-in and i'm pretty certain, they didn't plan to ruin poker rooms, but just are ignorant AF.

imo eu court recently said that they won't interfere if local gambling laws 'violate' eu laws. so yeah ... wenn das kind erstmal in den brunnen gefallen ist.

I guess the lobby for gambling espacially poker isnt very strong. They need the Braunkohle guys in Berlin

Just for my understanding. The GlüStaNüVströglw has nothing to do with taxation. It is just protection?
Are all taxes paid for poker as income with the 5.3%?

Taxation is a whole different issue. Poker income might still be "Einkünfte aus Gewerbebetrieb".

LOTTO is heavily taxed. If your Finanzamt determines you're a professional LOTTO player who found a way to beat the game in a sustainable way, they'd try to tax your winnings.

the 'new law' (aka buchstabensuppe) is planned to go ahead on july 1st and just regulates online poker and slots. it's the latest attempt to do so. and it seems it will go through (hence poker rooms jumping through the hoops after Oct 15th; like offering just 4 tables etc).

the new tax idea is just a by-product. basically they plan to add those games not yet regulated to the lottery taxation thing.

like madlex said, you still might end up owning taxes on your winnings

tl;dr: it's a triple f*ckup burger

We have poker rooms?

What do you guys say would a reasonable regulation for both sides look like?

The way they want to do it right now is a reasonable regulation in their opinion. Pretty much in line with other stuff like lottery and sports betting.

People rightfully mention that way is ridiculous for cash games. So maybe somebody should suggest to implement a system where that flat % fee gets you one or two hours of cash game and if you want to play longer, you have to pay again? Not sure if that made people happier though..

The "fair" way to do it would be to tax operators based on how much rake they collect. For players individually, I'm all for taxing winning players only. That should be fairly easy if we have regulated operators who are required to identify every player and track their win/loss record. At the end of the year, operators submit that data to tax authorities where records from various platforms can be tabulated and taxed with a flat 25% or something like that. Maybe as soon as somebody reaches $1000 in winnings on a single platform, the operator starts blocking 25% of that balance to ensure that the player is able to pay his taxes at the end of the year.