|
By:
Surely you couldn't get away with lowering your profit with gambling losses if you run a restaurant or a shop :D
thats fine, I understand the 'you cant offset betting losses against income tax', BUT The US taxes betting profits & so do some other EU countries, as you can as a 'Capital Gains'-type tax, rather than income so it does happen. It's pretty illogical, so you would think the UK would be clever enough not to do so... |
|
By:
TheInvestor, you have any dealings with this Centaur comapany, difficult to judge if they are safe/legit as quite glossy marketing etc.?
|
|
By:
Winnings from here are tax-free. A professional gambler can be liable for tax on income generated from tipping services, personal appearances etc. Also if someone else is providing the cash then their profit is tax-free but yours isn't because you are deemed to be providing a service to them - you are only gambling if you are risking your own cash. So be careful of syndicates and partnerships.
I have not made any money from personal appearances.....yet ;) |
|
By:
Partridge 21 Dec 20:01
TheInvestor, you have any dealings with this Centaur comapany, difficult to judge if they are safe/legit as quite glossy marketing etc.? No, I haven't. As my own % gains are higher, it wouldn't make sense for me to invest with them. I am quite interested in attending their free seminar on trading on the sports exchanges though, to have a closer look at their operations and maybe get some useful info. Although usually those 'free seminars' are mainly in the form of a sales pitch for an expensive course. I would assume that they have £ millions available to trade with. |
|
By:
surely this is the biggest bullsh1t thread ever
who gets heat from the students loan people? |
|
By:
d13phe 21 Dec 21:35
surely this is the biggest bullsh1t thread ever lol :^0 |
|
By:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/bimmanual/bim22015.htm
I can't be bothered reading the whole thread and this may have been posted earlier. If so I apologise. |
|
By:
who gets heat from the students loan people?
I did for 18 years. They are the absolute pits of the earth. |
|
By:
does Patrick Veitch pay tax then with all his runners placing bets for him as he is using other people?
|
|
By:
I think he would be able to argue that they were self employed and so it would be up to them to declare their position with regard to placing bets for him. They would be providing him with a service, for which they receive information/cash from bets as a return.
Before anyone gets carried away, no don't work for the IR! |
|
By:
DaveEdwards - garbish IMO dave..........
|
|
By:
BTW DE - it is clear you ain't got a clue re taxation........................
|
|
By:
BTW - naming someone on here is irrelevant to what you have posted DE..........I don't know, and you don't know, what a named person does.........however, if someone engages people to take their orders and place bets on their behalf within strict guidelines ....using the the instructor's money to place bets on their behalf.......then there is no doubt at all about whether they are self-employed or NOT........................................as they are not!
This is not to say that PV is operating in any WAY SHAPE OR FORM along those lines ! |
|
By:
Partridge 21 Dec 22:44
does Patrick Veitch pay tax then with all his runners placing bets for him as he is using other people? DaveEdwards 21 Dec 22:56 I think he would be able to argue that they were self employed and so it would be up to them to declare their position with regard to placing bets for him. They would be providing him with a service, for which they receive information/cash from bets as a return. Before anyone gets carried away, no don't work for the IR! I think the answer to this is no - since they simply have a "gamblers agreement" to split any profits that come from gambling. If this is well documented - which I assume it is - then neither side would be taxable. He need not get involved in any arguments over them being employed nor self employed. There's no precedent AFAIK though - but you'd assume the IR are more than aware of the Veitch "project" since he chooses to be so high profile. |
|
By:
If you have to pay tax move to Australia,definately no tax here.
|
|
By:
you sure late mail?
i spoke to the ATO, and was told it's a grey area, and if you operate in a businesslike manner it is taxable, more than for recreational purposes. |
|
By:
If you get arrested i would keep quiet about it though. My mate said the income he got from living of immoral earnings came from gambling and he ended up getting 10 years.
|
|
By:
First line of the Revenue guidance note -
An organised activity to make profits out of the gambling public will normally amount to trading. Interesting, if they ever sought to get a court ruling as to what this meant with regard to the activities of some on here. |
|
By:
If you / or anybody is means tested for benefits or student loans whatever,
obviouslly you'd declare what is in your bank account, savings and premium bonds etc., but if you wanted to hide some money, whatever you had in your a/c on here, maybe not declare that (?!) |
|
By:
No Tax on Gamblers ........ why cos only a tiny fraction of the pop of the UK .Bettors win . the tiny fraction who win ....... may not win next year .... how the hell can you tax that ..
|
|
By:
the same way the yanks tax it
if you win you pay the tax if you lose too bad |
|
By:
....just as they do with the PC
|
|
By:
if they were to go for a court case to establish the common law precedent, how much tax would they raise from pro-gamblers vs the amount it would potentially cost them to contest the court case (my guess is not that much, since so few punters are winners)
also - how many gamblers would they put off completely by taxing punters, thus reducing their tax intake from bookies and exchanges? as 'big issues' go on taxation, i'd be amazed if this was high on the revenues list of priorities, since they've made it clear they consider the 'big picture' to involve a net flow of money from punters to institutions, therefore the sensible thing is to tax the institutions but of course, what do i know, i'm hardly an expert on the subject |
|
By:
BIM22017 - Trade: exceptions & alternatives: betting and gambling: the professional gambler
[b]The fact that a taxpayer has a system by which they place their bets, or that they are sufficiently successful to earn a living by gambling does not make their activities a trade. This shows that having expertise or being systematic ( |
|
By:
The judgement in Graham v Greene is well worth a read. A 20s Robbie Box he was.
|
|
By:
indeed Alex, and that case highlights quite well a lot of the problems with assuming anything concrete about the HMRCs current guidance
i) there seem to be contradictory inferences drawn from the same single case ii) the precendent is nearly 100 years old |
|
By:
subversion
I had to examine that case eons ago and well before betfair was invented and well before I even considered a profit to be capable of being generated. I had to read it a number of times as I could not fathom how the judgement was finally reached given the rationale presented. It looked to me as if it was a political outcome. |
|
By:
A major issue in the UK would be, I would have thought, the fact that some highrollers could set themselves up as professional gamblers and their losses could become deductible. Luckily the IR in the UK doesn't operate the same way as the IRS (or indeed betfair as regards PC). However there's no guarantees. It depends a lot on the really big winners (7 figures a year) and how they profile themselves, etc IMO. If the IR thought there was a lot of money there (indeed, as much as there might in fact be) they might go after it.
|
|
By:
But the big difference is that gamblers don't generally make profits. But many seeders and skimmers do. I believe that it is incorrect to assume that current practice applies to seeders and skimmers.
Just because a profit is generated from a gambling website does not make it profit from gambling. |
|
By:
Alex - re. that Graham v Green case, i agree completely, and the scary thing is - that case, which most of the argument for non-taxation is based on, is from an era where the definition of punter (someone who backs at starting price) and bookie (someone who lays at starting price) was very clear cut... and yet the reasoning is still a total mess
if they do decide to test an exchange trader who both backs and lays in a systematic way, in an attempt to create a modern common law precedent, or attempt to create some statute in this area, who can say what the outcome will be Treble - yes thats pretty much how i read it too, the revenue/govt currently have much bigger fish to fry... trying create statute or common law around such a complicated area really isn't worth it unless they know the payoff for them will be big so far, it does seem that they don't think the payoff from taxing punters will be there, because most punters are losers and the net cashflow is from punters to institutions... so they prefer to just tax the institutions... this makes sense, but who knows if this will change if a few 'whale' type punters start making millions and flaunting their tax-free status around... or if theres a sudden moral backlash against gambling, etc etc |
|
By:
It is refreshing to be able to discuss this with somebody that knows their tax onions. The mob that adopt an attitude of "the bloke down the pub has a different tax code to me" was starting to wear. Especially when they get abusive and use upper case.
I would assume you work in the business. Would that be correct? If R&C have a pop then I might just come out of retirement. Unraveling and arguing the nature of different betfair transactions could be interesting. I used to enjoy my technical arguments with the Inland Revenue especially as I usually won. :) |
|
By:
lol Alex, i wouldnt really claim to know my tax onions - i'm currently studying for a Law degree part time, and have taken a pretty keen interest in the subject of betting tax because of my time spent on here...
and when i started looking 'behind the curtains', ignoring the wording of the HMRC guidance and actually looking at what the actual law itself was based on, it became obvious very quickly that a lot of the reasoning is very inadequate and out of date when applied to something as complex as betfair... ... and if the current case law precedent was applied to a modern situation, in a court presided over by a judge who probably knows next to nothing about gambling, the outcome would be far from certain ... and of course, not to mention the fact that the country is nearly broke and so crazy govt statutes are not out of the question either if the govt/revenue feel there is a golden goose to be plucked so i guess that puts my knowledge above the level of the 'man in the street', but i'm not exactly a qualified tax lawyer (although one day, who knows...) |
|
By:
Does anyone remember the option to pay tax either pre-bet or post-bet when placing bets at the bookies? 10p in the pounds. Why did that stop?
|
|
By:
Alex, if you are making money by placing bets on here you are gambling irrespective of volumes, profitability or strategy. Terms like seeders and skimmers don't exist in the IR vocabulary - yet.
|
|
By:
The Betfairy 23 Dec 09:49 Does anyone remember the option to pay tax either pre-bet or post-bet when placing bets at the bookies? 10p in the pounds. Why did that stop? It is because they applied a top up Corporation rate on betting companies to compensate for the loss of revenue. I am ok with old tax rools but not hot on the new stuff. |
|
By:
catfloppo 23 Dec 09:51 Alex, if you are making money by placing bets on here you are gambling irrespective of volumes, profitability or strategy. Terms like seeders and skimmers don't exist in the IR vocabulary - yet. That is right. It can only be a matter of time though. |
|
By:
... and if the current case law precedent was applied to a modern situation, in a court presided over by a judge who probably knows next to nothing about gambling, the outcome would be far from certain
I used to act for a prominent QC and one that is still on the bench. He was hearing a complex tax case and he asked me for my view. I had to admit that it was not my area of expertise. Astonishingly he admitted that he did not understand the facts at all but relied on the presentations of KPMG. It is scary. |
|
By:
I think they are shrewd enough to realise that anyone making money here would simply move abroad if they were taxed. They could go to a whole load of bother chasing nothing when they have bigger fish to fry. It will only happen if it becomes political imo.
|
|
By:
It will only happen if it becomes political imo
That would be my guess too. As mentioned earlier, successive governments have gone out of their way to encourage betting to stay onshore. I cannot see why, in the foreseeable future, they would u-turn. Besides, targetting exchange gamblers would lead to huge political negotiations, since it would effectively be punishing Betfair at the expense of the traditional bookmakers. |
|
By:
There used to be a tax loophole by living in Belgium when a major capital gain was in the offing. A loophole in Belgian tax law and the double taxation treaty. Despite millions being at stake only one person actually relocated of the people I advised. The rest just decided to pay up and stick with their life in the UK.
|