blonde poker forum

Just received an email from Stars about the EPT Deauville.

Hotel, party, players bag, blah, blah.

But then buried at the end of the email is this:

"Deductions
4% of the prizepool will be deducted from all tournaments to cover government taxation. The remaining 96% will be distributed as prizes."

It's been a while since I played an EPT, is this now standard in Europe?

Do EPT's not take a % for the dealers any more?

Taxing the prize pool at source is a terrible and worrying step for players.

(I've won an EPT Deauville seat brag post obv)

In the French only networks there is extra rake which goes straight to the government as tax. It's the reason that some big companies have not opened French rooms - they say the extra tax makes it so much more difficult to make it work financially. Don't know if this is linked to this though.

It should be made more clear - on this page http://www.europeanpokertour.com/tournaments/deauville/ the event is listed as €5000+€300 when in reality it's €4800+€500.

if it's french law now to tax poker then I'd say it's pretty good that it's only 4%

should definitely be made clear in advertising though

I'm going to be pretty cross if there's a deduction for dealers too.

Not that the dealers don't deserve it, but because it has not been mentioned anywhere on the info.

It doesn't make any difference- a £50+5 tourney with 4% taken out is the same as a £48+7.



Exactly. Why can't they just say this? It's either because they are trying to deceive players, in which case they need to stop it, or because of some bizarre tax rules, in which case they need to explain it properly (possibly followed by a Gallic shrug).

how is tht no diff?

uk prize pools are also taxed as the juice (in licensed casinos) is eligible for gaming duty (up to 50%)

Yeah but as explained ^^^^^ it is shown as part of the juice, not an "extra" deduction.

The casinos are also taxed on their juice in France. This is part of the tax they have to pay. The tax on the pool is a tax on poker, and therefore the player no matter where he comes from, itsself.

Only a matter of time before the UK government does the same IMO and at 4% you can't really complain I reckon.

don't see why you think that and i would most fing certainly complain if they did.

Because it's the trend everywhere at the moment. I will be very surprised if poker players are tax'ed like normal employees everywhere on the continent and the UK govt decides not to put any tax on them. It's the same with a tax on layers on Betfair, sooner or later it's bound to happen.

Why would you complain though? If you were to only have to pay 4% tax on winnings you're not really doing too badly compared to people in a "normal" job.

Have you heard of a concept called ROI?  What effective tax rate results from the imposition of a 4% tax on a player with a 5% profit margin.  What happens to a breakeven player?  The effect of this kind of tax is to lessen the likelyhood of players regularly playing in tournaments and if they can't be replaced by new players, a spiral of decline starts.

That's a fair point but how much tax do you reckon you should/would be able to afford to pay? An end of year tax on winnings doesn't sound like a massive issue to me. Nothing to do with an ROI (unless they decide to run it in exactly the same way as in France where every pot has a % tax raked and therefore you are also tax'ed on your losses. then again, if they do it like it's supposed to happen in Holland you'd pay 29% tax on your winnings, minus a tax deductable sum) Obviously the majority of players you would take the money from would be recreational or losing players and therefore the decline spiral is probably not as steep as you might think as most of them play for fun.

Yeah Keith it's just France.

Lets be honest it makes no odds if every one follows suit as we will all pay the charges no matter what at the end of the day.

The point is that the economic activity taking place is the casino persuading people to take part in their tournament and charging a fee.  The profit from the service provided by the casino is the activity that should be taxable.  

The customers of the casino assess whether or not they are getting value for money but like any other service an increase in costs results in a reduction of demand.  

As far as gamblers themselves the tax position in the uk is quite established and unlikely to change and a red herring in any debate about direct taxes from poker players prize funds.

Are you saying this 4% is a tax on the casino, rather than a tax on the players?

This is nonsense.

If I think rake/juice is too high, I won't play a tournament/cash game.

I won a seat for Deauville, but if I had known about this hidden juice, I might not have entered the sat.

not sure what you are on about but the bolded comment is pretty much what you are saying below?