The Spanish tax authorities have opened a nationwide probe to scrutinize the tax affairs of successful poker players, who are required to report and pay income tax on their winnings.
Tax investigators are said to be looking back as far as 2010, cross-referencing publicly-available tournament results databases, both for live and online tournaments, against Spanish players' tax returns to identify irregularities.
Spain recently liberalized its gambling market, but this seems to have coincided with a much more aggressive stance by the tax authorities in policing the sector. In 2012, retroactive tax settlements were negotiated with prospective gambling licensees, in a bid to apply tax laws dating back to 1966 and 1977, which previously only impacted offline gambling activities. Bwin agreed to pay back taxes worth EUR33.6m in exchange for a license last June. It appears that next on the tax man's agenda is the Spanish player base.
Spain is not the only European country cracking down on poker players who do not declare their winnings as income. Last November, the Swedish tax authority wrote to poker players to demand that they report their winnings made from online sites registered outside of the European Economic Area.
Back in 2011, the Italian Revenue Agency and the Guardia di Finanza, the financial police, took action, aptly codenamed "All In," over the taxable earnings of poker players on offshore media, such as dedicated television channels. After an initial analysis, it was discovered that more than 4,000 players had made almost USD100m, without declaring this income on their tax returns to the Revenue Agency.
Source: TaxNews.com
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