For those of you who actually pay taxes on your poker winnings...

[Talking Poker]

1. It's not illegal.

2. You are required by law to report all of your income, regardless of how you earned it. Lots of big-time gangsters have gone down for tax evasion, because that was the easiest way to bust them - Al Capone comes to mind, but I could be remembering wrong.

[billyboy62]

sorry i worded that wrong is it not illegal for usa citizens to transfer cash onto a poker site.I thaught that was why party poker had to shut to usa citizens

[Talking Poker]

It's "illegal" (loose definition) for the BANK to process the transfer. Party shut down U.S. play because they are a public company and were worried about how it would look if they were doing anything that could even be misconstrued by the general public as illegal... which obviously happens all the time. I mean, you are a poker player and don't fully understand the law (nothing wrong with that, btw - just saying)... so it only stands to reason that the average non-player would also assume "Online gambling is illegal in the US." At least that's how the people I know and meet seem to think.

Still a horrible decision by Party, IMO, but whatever. Their stock price tanked when they made the move, so goody for them.

[billyboy62]

Well i suppose we are lucky over here our government has sense and has acually regulated the online poker industry.I know why party shut down to usa citizens its lawyers and the city of london advised them that being a listed company they could be laying themselfes open to huge fines until the law in usa was acually clarified.The intresting part of all this is now how the usa is facing huge fines from wto for its stance about online poker.
Another point of intrest our government has a white list of online poker companys that are allowed to advertise on uk television 3 companys not on that list are pokerstars ub and ap three of the biggest sites.They all have 1 thing in common they are all regulated by the kahuna indians [prob spelt wrong] our government does not think there regulations are strong enough and offer very little protection to the people playing on the sites

[Talking Poker]

That is interesting. I'm actually a little bit surprised to see Stars on that list with the other two operations.

As for the "huge fines" the US is facing from the WTO, unfortunately, that didn't really work out the way any of us hoped it would. They ended up getting off for peanuts. I don't know how the US got away with it (I can certainly speculate), but it's really disappointing.

Let's see if I can find a link or you somewhere.

OK, here ya go:


Freaking $21 million a year. They were looking for $3.4 billion.

Ridiculous.

[billyboy62]

21 mill are they taking the piss or what i thaught the eec was going to nail the usa for breaching freadom of trade .How the hell did they buy there way out of that situation

[Kurn]

Really not how it happened. The WTO regs explicitly state that no member nation will be required to accept any business that is in violation with its own laws.

The crux of the debateis the fact that no other nation has anything remotely resembling US federalism (the separation of federal and state jurisdiction and thus, law).

The US (federally speaking) has a clearly written law that makes it illegal to use electronic means to wager on sporting events (the Wire Act). In and of itself, that would normall exempt the US from having to allow its citizens to gamble on such events online.

However, there is a carve-out in the law, that permits electronic wagering (in those states that allow it) on horse racing. From the outside, that looks protectionist and thus in violation of the WTO regs. In reality it isn't, but there is an understandable disconnect. Most non-US entities have a hard time grasping that in the US, the federal government, in many cases, has zero authority to determine what is and is not legal in the several States.

Its a dichotomy. On constitutional grounds(since the US Constitution supercedes international agreements), the US is correct vis-a-vis the WTO. On rational libertarian grounds, the US govt is wrong on gambling in general.