Still tax free and no problems accessing/playing

Lets say I want to have a place with 4 guys. Doesn't need to be in a big city or be a baller place. Just a safe place with good internet. What do you think the costs of that would be? Close to the beach would be nice I guess.

I'm interested in how many days per year you have to stay there in order to maintain the residency

Slovenia has ~40km of coast, so everything close to the beach is "baller" For 4 guys I think 600€/month and more. That's really a guess, not sure how many rooms and/or m2 you guys need.

I don't think it matters for temporary residence permit (at least I can't find anything). But for permanent one you need to stay here "uninterrupted" for 5 years.

Ty for the reply... How do they check whether you are in the house or not? I mean in Italy, once you took the resident, the police officers come once toI check and they never return...

No idea, sorry.

ty anyway

Anyone interested to open a poker house there?
Already posted in the Travel section, but the more the better i guess

Hey

I am playing online poker professionally and moved to Slovenia because of taxes. This year will be my first time to fill tax declaration for 2014. CoreySteel could you please describe how does process work? Doctor Poker, please share you experience as well.

I understood that tax inspection will send me tax bill by post until 31.3.2015 . If I don't get it until 15.6.2015 I fill in tax declaration by myself. Taxes are estimated according to the information inspection has about transactions on my Slovene bank accounts. If I don't agree with their tax estimations I have 30 days period to protest and try to explain my vision.
So here are my questions:

Did you get tax bill with 0 as profit or you didn't get anything and had to self declare?
If tax bill was not 0 did you go to the inspection and explained something? And how?

Do you send money directly from PokerStars to your bank account? Do you keep your bank account in Slovenia?
Do you use Skrill? Skrill replied to me that their policy is not to provide any signed papers about my transactions.


I asked some accountant to contact tax inspection and to get info for me. (Info below is not precise as they told me to wait until arrival of their estimation)
But! The first question they asked was whether websites I play at are Slovene. If website is not registered in Slovenia, all my profits from poker should be classified as "6300 Preostali drugi dohodki". And if I fill in declaration like this (Napoved za odmero dohodnine 2014) https://edavki.durs.si/OpenPortal/Co...w_Doh_Odm.aspx
It forces me to pay crazy more then 30% tax!
I have some laws on my side: "ki niso igre na srečo"
http://www.durs.gov.si/si/navodila_z...drugi_dohodki/
Hope for best.

I guess there can be some differences between websites too. For example http://www.pokerstars.com/ is banned by MINISTRSTVO za FINANCE. Even though http://www.pokerstars.eu/ does work. Do you know any details about PokerStars legislation in Slovenia? Did you provide such info to the tax office or they checked it without you? I play mostly at 888poker which is smaller. Could be extra pain with their registration in Slovenia.


Sorry for asking questions which can contain some of your personal info. I'v just registered account at 2+2 as was only reading forums before. So I do not have ability to PM to you yet, requested admins for it. Just in case, my email is dinerodibuja@yandex.ru


I am nervous about possibility to pay 35% from my profits now. Would be super grateful for the info you can provide!

Hey Suriek.

Before I go into the details, if you are going to declare your poker winnings as "6300 Preostali drugi dohodki", I'm pretty sure you will get taxed. Poker is not taxed and because of this, 0% of Slovenian poker players are filling taxes.


So first thing first. Slovenian gambling law (Zakon o igrah na srečo - ZIS) is declaring poker as a "special gambling game" (Posebna igra na srečo) and not a "regular gambling game (Igra na srečo), because we are playing against each other and not against the house (casino). This is declared in Article 53 (53. člen) in the mentioned law. On the other hand, Article 10 is also declaring which games fall under "normal/classical" gambling games.

Law on taxes for winnings in classical gambling games (Zakon o davku na dobitke pri klasičnih igrah na srečo – ZDDKIS) in Artcle 2 is saying, that only games from Article 10 of ZIS are taxed and games from Article 53 are not.

Income Tax Act (Zakon o dohodnini - Zdoh-2) in accordance with Item 4 Article 19 (4. točka 19 člen) declares that gambling winnings do not count as personal income - as written in ZIS, regardless of the source of winnings being from Slovenia or outside Slovenia.

ZDoh-2 also declares "Other income" as you quoted above (Item 6, Article 18), but poker falls under "Special gambling game" anyway.


No, I don't use bank account, I'm only using an e-wallet (Neteller in my case). But I never heard anyone getting a tax bill because of withdrawals on bank accounts either.


Hope this clears things up. If you need any more help, just let me know. And sorry for my English here... I'm not really into "legal lingo"

Dude, thanks a lot!
Such a relief to re acquire my 30% Your explanation clarified things. I own you nice meal if you will have time. Or can send you some wine. I am in Ljubljana. Let me know
dinerodibuja@yandex.ru

If any of u guys in slovenia want a new roommate hit me up. I wanna move to slovenia to play poker.

I did this move recently and can tell you that if you want to do it for real it is not too easy. Of course it is not super hard as well, still, paperwork is painful.
You need to open bank account to rent an apartment, and you have to rent it on your name because you need to register at the police to have official address. Rent contracts are for long periods preferably. At least 2 years, with fines if you leave before.
Once you have registration, you stay there for 6 month and apply for tax residentship. And from the beginning, to open bank account you need be employed or study in Slovenia, according to European regulations against money laundering. This all excludes biggest part about getting permission to be in the country as it is not needed to some nationalities.
All the paperwork is in Slovene, even though people here do speak a lot of languages quiet good, all official communications are in national language exclusively.
So having all that in mind I wouldn't recommend to bother to someone who wants to share apartment, (if you want to save like this) which are cheap here. If your tax savings are not big enough, it is not worth it.

Suriek could I talk you by skype? I have a lot of doubts about moving slovenia and I m very interesting in that. Sorry for my english.

Hello everyone,

Glad I found this thread.

About opening a bank account, if you are European do you need to be employed or study in Slovenia as well?

Me and a couple of friends are thinking about moving there for a year. There are a couple of doubts that we have.

If we rent a place, Will that be enough to get the tax residentship or we need to do more things?

When does the tax year starts? and it is required to be there 6 months a year or are there any exceptions?

I would like to know if anybody is actually withdrawing to a bank account and not using e-wallets.

Thank you in advance,

You need to be registered in Slovenia for 6 months to apply for tax residentship. So you rent appartment, go to the police (upravna enota actually) with contract on your name signed by landlord and this confirms that you live there. After 6 month you go to tax inspection (Davčna Uprava), fill in form and they send you residentship papers in 2 weeks. You loose tax residentship if spend more then 6 months in one year outside of the country.
Not sure how tax authorities check that you actually live in the country. May be you will need some bank statements too. I am employed in my case and it makes everything easier. You can open your own company for that and become director. Long process, there are people who can do it for 4-5k EUR as I can recall. If you become a director, you pay different employment taxes monthly. Plus accounting and business address bills.
To open bank account you need permanent address in Slovenia as well, may be employment too. Depends on you manager and bank regulations. Though it is easier to open bank account here rather then in Austria or UK from my experience.
I do withdraw to persona bank account. Tax authorities did not make any inquiries so far.

bumpp

I see you've bumped this thread here as well so I'll just copy/paste what I've told you in PM.

My last post was from 2015 and few things did change since then, as some sites have quit Slovenian market unfortunately: PokerStars, 888 and some iPoker sites.

You can still play normally on: PartyPoker, Winamax, GG, iPoker, WPN and most (if not all) smaller sites. You can also play on Unibet, but can't create a new account.

Law on poker taxes remains the same so = 0% tax.

There was an attempt for a new gambling law that would allow foreign betting sites to apply for a license and offer sports betting legally in Slovenia, but it didn't pass. State owned lotteries remain in monopoly and it doesn't look like it will change anytime soon.

If an EU country wants to have a monopoly, it can't block/make illegal the EU/world (depends on laws) play (maybe not in details). So, you should be allowed to play like anywhere now, like before. Or there might be a ****-you-EU period and the sites won't dare to allow you to play for now. You might again get back to the proposal of regulations.

This is why we don't have the regulations in Finland yet.

(We share the same player pool with Austria with one state software, but that's another thing, just showing some expanding possibilities, like the Mediterranean big-rake pools. The profits our monopoly make go to charity, instead of tax-payers or no one paying for it, and if regulated, the cuts are tax money.)

With the regulations, the monopoly is gone (maybe not in details), the state gaming money will decrease (and they get all the profits, not just a cut), replaced by cuts coming from players in a form of higher cost of play.

Getting the cuts from the big EU-sites is also a big thing, as they get zero now (and the EU regulations are looser). Overall, the regulation likely bring more money in, considering how many play elsewhere.

Though immoral in a sense, to regulate, as it is cut off the players, and so the license terms should make it impossible to cut it from the players, and then fine, the operators pay, as they should, instead of pocketing the money that belongs to the state, as they now do (in cases, they might pay us players some more but that's mainly gone by now; used to be the case at Stars but they decided to pocket the money themselves instead of giving it to us).

And who's gonna stop them?

I have an extensive video on this, but it's in Slovenian unfortunately, so won't help here really :P

Short version: EU commission is pressing on us to change the law since 2012 and our officials just don't care much. EU commission said we have to change the monopoly and open licenses for non-Slovenian sites. There were some "drafts" since then, but nothing concrete. In those drafts we still wanted to keep monopoly, even though it's against EU law.

Like I said in previous post there was an attempt for new sports betting and lottery law (no change about poker). Bill passed in Parliament, but got vetoed by National Council. When it went back to vote in Parliament, it didn't pass and new bill is dead. There's no reason why it wouldn't get passed, but lobbyists are just to strong. Not sure why I even use this word, I should just straight said bribers.

Current law states that only land based casinos can get a license for online games. And obv all land based casinos are state owned :P That's why our Ministry is sending letters to all poker sites that offer games in Slovenia to stop. If they don't apply, they get blocked by ISPs. Obv against EU law but again... Who's gonna stop them?

It seems to me there can actually be a demand that only the land-based casinos can get the license but in that case getting a license for land-based casino operations or a part of it (a partner with some land-based casino) needs to be allowed.

At least Pokerstars has often been dealing around these areas also (inside the EU also) and that then looks like to be the path that might most likely be taken.

It will likely limit the sites that can get a license, that might be okay for Slovenia compared to opening the markets to more operators. Maybe more sites will get the land operations also in the future but that depends on how easy it will be made.

Yeah... That sounds like a fairytale.

What's the situation like in Slovenia now with regards to access to online gambling sites?

Is your government ISP blocking poker sites and online sportsbooks?

Same as few posts back (#43), nothing has changed in these two months.

ISPs are blocking few bigger sites (PartyPoker, WilliamHill, ...), but that's easy to bypass with a simple DNS server change.

Hey, thank you to share all those information!

Is there any way to get a confirmation that poker is not taxed in Slovenia(an official one).

If you go to Slovenia as a poker player is it likely you will get an authorization to stay for more than 3 months? Poker player is not a job and we got no salary to justify "sufficient means of subsitence".