Sweden After Millions of Unpaid Online Poker Taxes
11 years ago
10 Oct
Poker players in Sweden playing on poker rooms that are not a part of the European Union are required to declare their winnings and pay regular 30% tax on them.
Earlier this week, Radio Sweden hosted Dag Hardyson, an Internet specialist with the tax office, who revealed in the interview that the Swedish Tax Authority had already uncovered about 50 poker players this year who have failed to report their gambling winnings from the Internet sites based outside the European Union. Thanks to the great cooperation with international tax heavens, Sweden’s tax Agency Skatteverket have found €27.5 million (250 million Kronor) in undeclared poker winnings.
Many people involved in this case are professional poker players, people who are very well established in society and they have won large sums of money. They will now have to pay taxes on their winnings.
I am pretty certain that this is the first time that we have used the possibility of trying to get information about yet identified people. And we have been getting excellent information from tax havens, this really has paid off. Dag Hardyson for Swedish Radio News;Hardyson and his colleagues working on the case tried different methods to reveal who was behind all the winnings and trying to avoid paying the taxes. They have used all information from poker forums and online databases looking for potential players flaunting Sweden’s poker taxes law. Although poker players mostly use nicknames when playing online, Swedish tax authorities had support and help from the authorities in the former tax havens. Through this cooperation, gamblers who have won big sums of money were identified. Sweden’s tax agency presented a list of screen names to various offshore tax havens in order to help identify the real names behind the online poker accounts.
These people will now be asked to pay taxes and fines for millions of Swedish Kronor, Dan Glimme, Unibet Poker ambassador, wrote for Sweden’s leading newspaper Aftonbladet.
A number of Swedish online poker players have already received letters from Skatteverket, requesting information about their poker playing activities and winnings from 2008 through 2011. The letter asks about winnings from the following sites: PokerStars, Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker and Bodog, which are a few of the most popular online poker sites not based in the European Union.
Swedish poker players are not allowed to play online poker based outside of EU without paying a 30% tax, and for a professional poker player, having to avoid giants like PokerStars certainly represents a significant handicap.
It would be simple enough (although cutting deep into the profits) for Swedish players to regularly pay their taxes. The other route to take is the one of avoiding it and hoping not to get caught. However, if and when that eventually happens, the ramifications are very serious as they involve not only paying the backlogged taxes but also paying the significant fines – not to mention a damaged reputation.
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