Licensing poker rooms for economically stricken European countries will go a long way in collecting much needed additional tax revenue, while the rooms seem only but eager to get into the action regardless of the expense as can be seen by the large amounts in back taxes that were needed for the mentioned rooms to be granted poker licenses in Spain.
All the Spanish .es poker rooms are currently segregated from the rest of the world due to legislation but it is hoped that early 2013 will see the reintroduction of Spain to the rest of the world.
PokerStars have yet to introduce all their poker games to the Spain with the current maximum table limits set to €0.50/€1 and Zoom Poker is still being held back from the pokerstars.es domain.
Little is known as of yet just how much PokerStars was required to pay the Spanish Government to be granted their license but the €200 million estimate seems to be mentioned quite often.
Bwin.Party the merged group comprising of PartyGaming (PartyPoker) and Bwin needed to fork out a massive 33.6 Million Euros ($42 million) in back taxes to be granted their Spanish license while 888-Poker needed to cough up €7.4 million and some €1.3 million in surcharges and interest.
Will Poker Taxation Kill Online Poker?
While it may all be well opening and regulating the online poker industry the major question is if players will actually join these regulated rooms with stringent government enforcement and insanely high tax rates will this be the death of online poker?
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