Cider 29 Apr 23 09:02 
You're looking at it from the wrong angle, dusty. The people behind this don't think you should be gambling (aside from a tenner on the grand national/ lottery). They don't care if people who can afford to lose are restricted. They definitely don't care for anyone who is betting full time, they'd rather you didn't (or weren't able). The concept of winning full time, long term is an anathema.

Yes, it's impossible to get away from the politics. Not party politics, but ideology. This project is just a part of the move to try and sanitise general life.

There are very few people in politics who fight for genuine freedom for individuals now. Okay, the few that do exist in the Tory party, but they are being marginalised and othered as kooky dinosaurs.

You just have to look at the utter spineless collapse of the political class over the lockdown disaster. I don't tend to be defeatist, but there is little hope, we are inexorably headed to CCP style control of the minutiae of our daily lives.


Sir Epicure Mammon 29 Apr 23 09:07 
Cider, you have hit the nail squarely on the head there !



I second the nail being hit squarely on the head, you can look at this whole business the same as the current situation involving the whip and animal welfare, we're are getting chipped away at bit by bit with different factions coming at us from different angles forming a pincer movement and eventually there will be nothing left.

The optimists are missing that when this came up a couple of years ago, the langauge used was deposits not losses. This change is clearly deliberate.

cos she makes loads from johhny forriner and pays her taxes (so anyone doing eg a bit of bonus abuse gets a police taskforce on their case)

This has been discussed on numerous occasions, gambling profits are not taxable by virtue of winning over an extended period

I know that that's the famous judgement from many decades ago: that a gambler is not acting according to the usual definition of a business, i.e., organizing things with the assumption of generating a profit. But we have common law in this country: if circumstances change, so does the courts' interpretation of the law.

Things are different now, particularly with the rise of this place. If I were to start arguing that I do indeed have thirty-two years of reliable, long-term income, which happens to have been through gambling alone, it feels as though I'd be sticking my head into a dark doorway marked TRAP.

It just wouldn't be worth the risk. If I ever do fall victim to an affordability check, I've decided that the only option is to ignore it and walk away.

Thanks, dave. Yes, you're right in that you wouldn't actually need a judge to change the courts' interpretation of the law for the Revenue to have a go at a punter. But if the punter were to fight the Revenue over the matter, then presumably a judge would have to make a judgement at some point.

The big problem is that when, over the years, there has been the occasional challenge to the original judgement, it's always been a case that the winning punter has been arguing that those profits really are not an income. But in the current circumstances a punter would be arguing that his profits in fact are an income. It would be hard to see a punter winning a case against the Revenue with that line of argument!

But as you say, it's all moot, because you'd never get your account unrestricted with this line of argument anyway. So, it's a case of ignoring any request for documents, and walking away.

By the way, I don't think that your argument that a punter should be allowed a to set aside a tank for gambling is ever going to fly: basically it's just a demand to be allowed to gamble your savings, which is the very thing the Duncan Smiths and the purple-haired loons are seeking to prohibit.

Being pedantic, it's not really "income" that is the issue with tax, it is that gambling isn't a trade, profession or vocation, so there isn't a basis for it to be subject to income tax. And someone looking for betting opportunities and taking them is never going to be taxed unless the govt creates a new tax schedule. There are def some exchange activities that come close to doing what a bookmaker does, particularly bots and if that was what you were doing it might be better to keep a low profile.

Re savings before the issue became "official" I got the GC to grudgingly to say:

I can confirm that there is no rule under which a licence is held with us that categorically states savings cannot be gambled.

So I've taken it up wuth them again and will try to persaude them to include it in the consultation.

I thought (though I have no way to confirm or support this) that the reason that HMRC have never tried to make gambling winnings liable to income tax is that doing so would make gambling losses offsettable against income for tax purposes, and since most punters lose (and bookie profits are already taxed and levied) that would be a net loser for them?

Yes, longbridge, that is the practical reason why there's no over-arching taxation of income from gambling. If there were, it would actually be a net loser for the Revenue, as gambling losses are obviously higher than winnings, owing to Betfair's nice little earner of 2% commission in every transaction.

But the original judgement from 98 years ago, was more philosophical: in the case of Graham v Green (1925) 9 TC 309, the judge opined:

“A bet is merely an irrational agreement that one person should pay another person on the happening of an event.”

So there you are. That's us told.

Here is something good

At a moderate loss threshold (we propose either £125 net loss within a rolling month or £500 net loss within a rolling year), operators should conduct a financial vulnerability check, considering the types of open source indicators which many already routinely assess such as County Court Judgements, average postcode affluence, and declared bankruptcies. These checks should take seconds to process and would be frictionless for the consumer. We estimate only around 20% of accounts in a calendar year will trigger this check as most never lose this much gambling. Net loss means the loss of deposited money with a particular operator, and does not include the loss of restaked winnings from that operator.

all their "checks" are based on "net loss" as defined. If you are a winner, you can at least put forward the argument that the money in your account is not from deposited money. And if you practice decent risk management, you will be able to operate.

Once again getting the GC to write in their guidance that net winners who have savings resulting from those winnings shouldn't be restricted is obv needed. As this obviously forces people to hold large balances in gambling sites, the majority of which don't protect those funds.

Please may it be true

well it is lost deposits rather than deposits. btw it isn't ideal to be forced to keep a lot of money on a site, so it should aggregate deposits and negative deposits (withdrawals).

If a betting shop loses £1,000, 2 days running, will they have to close until they get the auditors in to prove they are still solvent?

Net loss means the loss of deposited money with a particular operator, and does not include the loss of restaked winnings from that operator.


I read that as well on Thursday, and made a printout of it to try and decipher what it really meant. My conclusion was that the person writing it wanted to make it clear that, if you were already up £150 for the month, you would have to lose all of that £150 and then a further £125 on the month before the £125 vulnerability check, for instance, was performed.

I will be surprised if BF use a 'net loss' figure that's different from the one they already record on their site - and that one simply measures whether you've made a profit or loss on your bets over the specified period.

On the other hand, those people on the forums who have been subjected to affordability checks often seem to have made some big deposits recently, so it's possible there's an out here.

The problem that we have though is that in order to cater for people with past losses, they might zero everyone at some point and count all losses as if they were from deposits although in some cases those deposits haven't been made. Because that way is much more simple for them. Which might have been what you meant?

Past winnings won't come into it IMO, past profit doesn't prove your current status is liquid, it also doesn't suggest that all that profit is sat in a box with the words" betting money only" written on it. For all any operator knows, you've been living hand to mouth and although you have shown an ability to win, that money is spent as quickly as it comes in and you couldn't afford a loss of any length.

*wouldnt

The end is nigh…..

Or similarly, a soft credit check should be an alternative - if someone has huge debts showing then maybe it's right to assume a problem, but if not then...carry on!

I'm assuming the bookies' idea of 'problem gambler' is somebody who's consistently losing more than they can afford to bet, Cider. If you have £500 to spend after you've paid off your mortgage, bills, food etc. for the month, but you're regularly sticking a thousand pounds into your betting account and then losing it again, you're probably a 'problem gambler'.