The wording in the budget speech seems to suggest that the new online tax of 1% will apply to punters who  are based in ROI who bet with either bookies who are based in ROI or with bookies who are not based in ROI but who will be licenced by the Irish government to offer their service in to the ROI market. Both the licencing bit and enforcement bit will be tricky but that looks to be the plan. If that is the plan the inference seems to be that Irish or indeed non irish bookies who are based in ROI will be able to offer completely tax free betting to non ROI residents. The proposed amendment to the 1931 Betting legislation will obviously reveal the exact details.

At the moment irish and non irish bookies based in ROI already offer that service anyway but do so by basing the jobs in ROI but their bet accepting servers in IOM and Gibraltar so the bets technically are placed abroad thereby avoiding the 1% betting tax. I dont know what the foreign jurisdictions charge for this privelege, but whatever the charge is it can now be avoided as it looks like it will be legal for ROI based bookies to accept bets from non ROI based punters completely tax free which should lead to more jobs, more corporation profits tax etc.

By my understanding they pay a turnover tax of .1 percent and a licensing fee around 100,000 plus.

If it was to be tax free to those outside R.O.I. then it probably would makes economic sense for the major players to move here if the license fee was somewhere similar.

From my reading of it I would say it is highly unlikely that you will have to pay tax.However the matter will not be finalised until the Finance Act at the earliest.

Rowley. If the trading terms here were the same as Gibraltar it would be no contest. I know a couple of people who work over there and while the weather is a plus it is not really an attractive place to live and work. International bookies based in Dublin would find it easier to attract staff, would be very close to the UK, have access to high speed broadband  and also have access to motivated highly educated staff. The fact that Bf have located their telephone operation here speaks volumes. If things get nasty in the UK with respect to levy levels they have a ready made bolthole here with respectable tax levels particularly if the tax is a % of commission which seems to be the case.