I have below answered questions posed both here and privately. I have paraphrased the questions for clarity; I am not directly quoting players. In addition to these questions and answers, I suggest reviewing our updated FAQ here:

http://www.pokerstars.gr/en/poker/room/support/pwt-faq/

We must operate in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. We have received legal advice that in order to be able to continue offering our product in Greece in line with Greek regulation we must collect this tax on behalf of the Greek authorities, so we are reluctantly doing so.

We recognize that this is a very poorly structured tax for poker and that it has devastating consequences for many players in Greece. We continue to work very proactively to educate the relevant authorities on why this tax is so harmful for players, authorities and indeed governments. We are pushing strongly for change.

In the meantime we are working hard to minimize the impact of the changes on our players.

While understanding of the problems generated by this tax is increasing and we hope that changes will be made as a result, the current legal situation dictates that we must collect the tax for now.


There are two main reasons why we have reduced tournament offerings.

The first is that we are not fully technically prepared to deal with this situation as it is quite unique. Until we develop software improvements designed specifically to help us deal with this tax, we need to proceed cautiously as we work out manual procedures to enforce the new rules.

The second is that we want to minimize the possibility that a Greek player will incur a large tax liability by winning a big tournament without realizing that they will need to pay the tax. It will take time for the Greek poker community as a whole to fully understand the rules and how best to deal with them.

Once awareness has improved and we have developed additional technical capabilities, we will need to decide to what degree we can broaden our offering of games for the PokerStars.gr license.


A substantial majority of the tax liability that would have been incurred by Greek players through prior levels of play would have been due to tournaments. We also have existing, commonly used functionality to restrict tournaments by country.

Restrictions to some cash game types and stakes may be added in the future if we see that play at those game types frequently results in accrual of large tax liability relative to the stakes played.


I don’t currently have an estimate as to when this might happen. We will review the situation regularly and adjust as appropriate. We are looking to do this as quickly as possible while minimizing negative consequences for players.


Yes.

We are acting according to our legal advice. Questions about other sites’ behavior are best addressed to those sites.


As long as you are still registered for those tournaments at the end of the day (i.e. before 7am Greek time), no, you won’t. Tournament entries and fees are debited from your winnings when calculating daily profit.

If you unregister for a tournament, the amount of buy-in plus entry fee is added to your profit for that day for purposes of calculating tax. In this case, if your unregistrations totaled 100 EUR and you didn’t play any other poker that day, your profit for the day would not exceed 100 EUR so you would not be taxed.


In this case, for purposes of tax calculations you will have a daily profit of 100 EUR (600 – 500), so you will not incur any tax.

Pokerstars Steve 2 questions , what about players who got ticket to live events from your site ? Like EPT Prague ? whats the deal with that are they getting 20% taxed because they are greeks?

Also what if i direct buy in in prague for the main event? Am i getting taxed ?

Quote:
Why have you reduced offering of tournaments?

There are two main reasons why we have reduced tournament offerings.

The first is that we are not fully technically prepared to deal with this situation as it is quite unique. Until we develop software improvements designed specifically to help us deal with this tax, we need to proceed cautiously as we work out manual procedures to enforce the new rules.

The second is that we want to minimize the possibility that a Greek player will incur a large tax liability by winning a big tournament without realizing that they will need to pay the tax. It will take time for the Greek poker community as a whole to fully understand the rules and how best to deal with them.

Once awareness has improved and we have developed additional technical capabilities, we will need to decide to what degree we can broaden our offering of games for the PokerStars.gr license.

================================================== ================

How about Stars organizing just specail Greek tournements, that the max win is 99.99 euro's. ( adjust BI and max. entries accordingly ) Run these all day at the .gr site. It would at least look like a form of Stars protest of the current Greek Tax situation.

Also I am suprised ROW players can play at the .gr site, are they subject to the PWT? Or did Stars inadvertently do a Party Poker segregation goof?

Hi Steve, thanks for comming over.

May I ask why Stars didnt advice/inform the greek community and came up with this changes and PWT without any notice? If I knew I would use all the FPP that I have.

I live the spanish regulation and at least we were informed with a lot of time, so the spanish community was able to do something.

Thanks

1. You ve already politarded this thread and have not covered yourself in glory.

2. Paying 37% of my income in tax which I would last year is different than paying 40% MARGINAL tax rate. FYI marginal tax rates, don't tax a certain amount up to let's say 7,000, and then they tax levels of your income based on the tax rates for said levels for example, from 7,000 to 15000, 15%, from 15,000 to 20,000 20% and so on; in effect the actual portion of the income paid is less than the marginal rate.

Plus you can claim deductions.

Quote:
Follow-up #2: What happens if the next day I lose 500 EUR in ring games, don’t play any tournaments, and unregister from 600 EUR worth of tournaments that I registered for in prior days?
In this case, for purposes of tax calculations you will have a daily profit of 100 EUR (600 – 500), so you will not incur any tax. Unquote

Hello steve,
Does that work the same way with cash games? For example if you have 200$ total profit in a game session and just before it ends you sit in 200NL table.
Then you will not pay taxation for that specific session?
Thanks

make the tax /year happen.one time.

Was thinking the same

Juk

Does the same apply for cash games?
What if instead of being registered at tournaments I'm sitting at cash game tables before 7am with all my profits from that day(but not my whole amount in cashier) and stand up after 7:01am the buy ins are debited from my winnings of that day?

Well one of the reasons Euro is weak is bc of greece, spain and other southeuropian countries..

Thank god i live in Denmark where we voted no to Euros as our currency

so if you register and next day unregister in future tourn may help you avoid daily taxes in some cases? is that correct??

lets say someone plays cash n wins like 300e n decides to end the session there.
he then registers in some tourns for a total of 200, next day unregister to have his money again in the cash games etc etc

plus if someone actually wanna play some tourns n didnt think to register a day where we was a plus 100e winner he will have to pay taxes just because he forget? wtf

The Euro is strong right now. Not that the concept of weak or strong has any meaning when talking about currencies.

But for the record, the reason Denmark is economically healthy is precisely because it can manage the krona rate vs the euro.

I PMed Steve and he suggested i post this here so he can answer.

Lets say i move for 1 month or longer to another country and provide pokerstars with the necessary documents about my relocation and they approve so i move to pokerstars.com or pokerstars.eu.
Then i decide to come back in Greece and live there(so I'm living at 2 different countries for w/e reason, i don't relocate again my account!). I still have to relocate my account to pokerstars.gr and pay taxes or I am completely legal and can play on pokerstars without the greek law affecting my play?

Hello Steve and thank you for the info provided. Surely though you have created more questions.

I am reading in your updated PWT-FAQ......

"Can players from Greece play for real money in other countries?

Yes but please note that under the terms of the End User License Agreement of your account we will still apply the same terms as if you were playing in Greece."

According to another question in the pwt-faq, a greek player living in greece, will not be able to play using other pokerstars products e.g pokerstars.fr

So, what exactly means the QA above? Even if i am a RELOCATED greek player you will still apply the tax? Thus, if i relocate, will i have to create new account in order to play?? If that's the case, WILL YOU PERMIT greek players to create new accounts? It's soooooo confusing please clarify

As long as you dont use your Stars account when you move back to Greece, you arent forced to anything. First, Stars won't know you moved back to greece, and no one will know.

Am i understanding correctly that you can just register for tournaments when you are up >100e and unregister when you are down to get a profit of about 100e each day and get to make ~~36500 euro tax free? It seems that the profit is just starting balance-end balance for the day in which case this should work.

U can't compare poker to other kinds of business. There are sales in the "real" world that give the salesman more than 300% profit. In poker most of the best players can't have more than 50% roi in the long term. Most of the winners have 10-30% roi. Please stop

Exactly. Booom!

Somewhat of a "solution" for Greek players.. Bitcoin poker. I know the software isn't the best and volume isn't the highest, but at least you can play without being taxed into oblivion.

And all this said from a 22yrs old man ++++1

it would be a "solution"....... but today´s rate of 1bitcoin = 584euros

pokerstars steve plz update us on the relocation procedure as soon as u have answers for it...

There is an answer that is not very clear on the faq in the page below: http://www.pokerstars.gr/poker/room/support/pwt-faq/

In the what happens if we are in the middle of a cash game session at 7am question the answer does not make it clear if the total of the session is going to get transfered to the next day or the amount on the tables is.

For example, suppose I win 1000eu and am sitting at a table with 800eu, will stars keep the taxes for the 200eu that are winnings and are not on the tables? Or even in the scenario that I am up 1000eu and sitting with 900eu at the tables, is the 100eu that no tax is paid on going to be count as winnings that taxes have been applied on them and move the 900eu for the next session or the total of 1000eu is going to move to the next session?

I've read the whole discussion from the start and i've noticed that many people failed to realise what this tax mean, things that luadarko, leviathan etc we're trying to make clear...

I ) So, assume we have a break even player over a large sample size of daily sessions. For simplicity, we assume that his daily win/loss is:
+200$, -200$, +200$, -200$...
and after the tax deduction on his winning days he suddenly became a losing player.

II ) Now let's take a winning player . As we did earlier, we assume a distribution:
+500$, -450$, +500$, -450$,...
and after the tax deduction he became a losing player!!!

I understand that my examples are oversimplified but nonetheless serious conclussions can be drawn. Losing players become more losing, break even players become losing and a portion of winning players become losing as well.

And that's why we complain about...

my questions r:

why dont u call the greece-players for a boycott of your software, so that the taxes which have to pay-out r nearly 0 ? so that the government see, that they r destroying the market with their hillarious decisions ?

why dont u stop to offering greece-online-poker for a short time so that they see, that they have destroyed greece-online-poker ?

I bet there r not very many players which produces a lot of rake