Warning to any gamblers in Spain

[rcgills]

And am I right in thinking that Spain has-or had-a tax which takes into account a persons overall wealth regardless of where it was?

Couldn't tell you Hotspur, you'd have to ask someone wealthy

Do they have Roulette machines in the shops in spain?

I think they do Yorkie, yes, although I can't say I've paid much attention when I've been in there. The bookies are like little mini-casinos, I know there are loads of fruit machines, think they have poker rooms, and I think there probably are roulette wheels, but I've always headed straight to the bookies area rather than the casino part.

Been reading around a bit more on the forums today, there's so many possible theories out there, but no-one seems to know the truth, and not being a regular on any of the forums, I don't know which of the names are more trustworthy, or whether any of them are industry-insiders, etc.

About the most convincing argument I've read so far is that in terms of the tax laws, nothing has changed (which is true) - strictly speaking you've always been obliged to declare your income from gambling (although let's face it, it's hard to imagine many people voluntarily declaring their actual profit, never mind declaring their total winnings without deducting losses). The only thing that has changed is that the tax office now has a concrete means of finding out what you've won, which it hasn't had until now.

The more I think of it though, the more I'm convinced they can't possibly charge you on each winning bet. That would mean that if you put 100€ into an account, backed a 1.5 shot, you get back 150€. They'd tax you on that 150€. But if you then put that 150 on another 1.5 shot, you'd be up to 225€. According to the most pessimistic outlook, they'd then tax you for that 225€, but how can they, if you've already paid tax once on the first 150€, effectively they'd be taxing that money for a second time. And each time you reinvested that money on another winner, it'd be re-taxed again, and again. Surely the most they can do is tax you on the profit from each bet, not the total return?

The biggest problem is that the government and the tax office aren't actually doing anything to clear up the confusion, they're happy to just let it fester.

For the time being I've refused to let any bookies I had accounts with change me over to their new .es domain. Once the confusion is cleared up, I'll consider re-opening them. Until then there's no online betting for me. So if the Spanish administration continues as it is, on that basis, I'll probably see you all in time for the 2015/16 season.

I have read though that apparently you can bet in the shops without too many problems, the shops only have to declare payouts of more than 3k, and bearing in mind my biggest ever win is 425€, I shouldn't have too many problems in that respect if I use them for the odd Euro 2012 bet

 

[hotspur]

fuck me,no wonder you see/saw me as arrogant!

 

[rcgills]

fuck me,no wonder you see/saw me as arrogant!

Eh?

 

[Yorkieacer]

Were not all big stakers Hotspur

So in all of this surely they must have to tax you on winnings from the machines then as well?

 

[rcgills]

So in all of this surely they must have to tax you on winnings from the machines then as well?

Strictly speaking yes, but that's always been the case, just the same as strictly speaking, if you win on a fruit machine in a bar, you're supposed to pay tax on that. And obviously if you did, you'd be pretty stupid, because how the fuck are the tax office going to know about that. You also wouldn't be able to say "OK, I won 250€, but as I've put a couple of euros into that machine every day for the past 3 months, we'll call it quits". Which is why the rules apparently suggest that you shouldn't be able to offset losses in gambling - if they consider gambling as a game of chance, the same as the fruit machines, then they want to apply the same rules to everything. So if a fruit machine player can't offset his losses, nor should a gambler be able to.

Of course the big difference is that a fruit machine player has no way of proving how much they put into a machine before they got paid out. With online gambling, you've got a detailed account history and can prove everything.

 

[Colbro]

I remember when I first gambled there was a 9% tax on each bet - you could choose whether it would be on the stake or the winnings. Effectively each pound bet became a £1.09 bet.
Imagine you'll end up with something like that if they could ever enforce it.
Victor Chandler moving to Gibralter ended the UK idea.

 

[rcgills]

I remember when I first gambled there was a 9% tax on each bet - you could choose whether it would be on the stake or the winnings. Effectively each pound bet became a £1.09 bet.
Imagine you'll end up with something like that if they could ever enforce it.

Would be the easiest way to do it, certainly, it'd prevent them having to chase people for money at the end of every year, and remove any doubt (and any possibility of cheating the system) among gamblers. Can't see why they wouldn't be able to enforce it, presumably it could work in a similar way to Betfair deducting the commission on every bet.

Was reading the opinion of a poster who seems to know what he's on about on another forum, he compared the declaration on gambling winnings to holding shares. Gambling winnings are supposed to be declared as capital gains, and as this poster pointed out, if you hold shares and at the end of the year they've gone up 20%, you wouldn't have to declare that. You'd only have to declare any returns at the moment you sold the shares, and the same applies with bets, you wouldn't have to declare your returns on every bet, with the balance of your account fluctuating from day to day, you'd only declare the amounts you withdraw back to your bank account. He also reckons you have an allowance of 1600€ for capital gains, so if you withdraw less than that, you wouldn't have to pay either.

Anyway, I'm wasting far too much of my life reading these forums going round and round in circles, the threads are growing at a rate of about 20 pages a day and I'm getting no work done (which is almost certainly costing me far more money than any potential fallout from this gambling legislation ).

 

[rcgills]

Just been reading up on some of the latest developments, it seems that now with the new accounts on the .es domains, you can only place in-running bets with funds already in your account before the event started (supposedly because otherwise it could lead compulsive gamblers to deposit during an event and place bets they can't afford). At least one bookie has now also started limiting punters to one bet per event in-running (so you now no longer have the opportunity to cover yourself if you're in a favourable position). Again, supposedly to discourage any compulsive gamblers.

Meanwhile, on the TV, there's a program on as I type with live coverage from some online roulette site or other (makes for thrilling television, I can tell you ) . The presenter has apparently earlier in the program been encouraging people to use the Martingale approach backing red/black or odd/even, because apparently your chances are 50/50, so you'll win in the end (his words, not mine).

Glad we've got that sorted out then. Spotting a decent in-play opportunity and depositing funds to take advantage of it is a sign of a gambling problem. Placing more than one bet on the same in-play event is the sign of a gambling problem. Martingale staking on a roulette wheel is a valid technique to be encouraged.

Imagine the biggest argument you've ever had on the subject of gambling, with some ignorant colleague/relative/whoever, who thinks they know all about gambling based on nothing more than cliches and stereotypes (well, you never see a poor bookie, do you), when in fact they know fuck all. Now imagine they're in charge of gambling regulations in your country. Welcome to Spain 2012. Thank fuck we have these people looking after our best interests. Bunch of cunts

 

[rcgills]

According to one forum they apparently had a black sequence into double figures last night. Early in the sequence the presenter was encouraging people to start betting on red, as it was overdue

And further proof of what exactly gamblers in Spain are having to deal with. A rough translation of a quote from the head of the Gaming Commission on the subject of Betfair (which is currently operating as a bookie rather than an exchange in Spain, as exchanges are currently banned): "We're studying exchanges with a view to regulating them. Maybe to start with we saw them as a risk which wasn't particularly easy to control. In those bets, a player bets against another and it may be that both of them enter into a spiral of risk which then gets out of control. Now we're going to study this, and if possible, regulate it".

So, basically exchanges are the work of the devil, setting a trap to tempt unsuspecting gambling addicts into parting with their hard-earned cash. Whereas Martingale tactics at the roulette wheel ...

 

[hotspur]

Wow,this is astonishing stuff,indeed.

I wonder what theyd make of someone claiming to make a living from accumulators

Methinks Spain is the place to publish my book.

 

[hotspur]

Im definitely very interested in this situation but also a bit confused.

rcgills,can a Spaniard place a bet with Ladbrokes?

if not then who can he place a bet with?

thanks

 

[rcgills]

Im definitely very interested in this situation but also a bit confused.

rcgills,can a Spaniard place a bet with Ladbrokes?

if not then who can he place a bet with?

thanks

Strictly speaking the issue isn't who a Spaniard can place a bet with, it's who a resident in Spain can place a bet with. A Spaniard living in the UK can place a bet with who he likes, but I, as a Brit living in Spain can't.

But anyway, in answer to your question, yes, Ladbrokes have a Spanish licence. If I type in www.ladbrokes.com on my browser, though, I'm automatically redirected to http://www.ladbrokes.com/home/es, which is the site for "LBApuestas", Ladbrokes' Spanish site (Apuestas being the Spanish for "bets"). Off the top of my head, other sites with a licence to operate in Spain are bet365, Sporting Odds (under the name "MiApuesta"), Stan James (as "Golden Park"), Bwin, Betfair (as a bookie, not an exchange, as mentioned above) and William Hill. There are a lot of others too, can't remember how many companies were awarded a licence, think it may have been around 50 (although that's casinos and poker as well as bookies), but half the sites I've never heard of. There are no doubt some well-known ones that have got licences but which I've left off my list.

 

[Pete89]

What are the prices like compared to the UK ones? would it be worth investing in a VPN to bypass it?

 

[ONEDUNME]

I'd rather give up gambling than bet with Sportingodds and Stan James and that's like an alcoholic saying he's going cold turkey.

Waste of fucking space

 

[rcgills]

What are the prices like compared to the UK ones? would it be worth investing in a VPN to bypass it?

Sorry Pete, seem to have somehow missed that post completely when you posted it.

At the moment, from what I can tell, the odds seem to be the same. Only way I've got of checking the odds on the UK version of the sites is via Oddschecker (which I assume is showing the UK prices). Just checked the odds for Bet365 on the first round of Spanish Primera games, and the odds on the winner of the Olympics tennis, and in both cases the odds showing for Bet365 on Oddschecker are the same as the odds on www.bet365.es.

Having said that, I think I read somewhere that the same thing happened in France to begin with (as I think they have similar regulations), the odds stayed the same to start with so as not to scare people off, but eventually they started lowering them.

As for the VPN, I guess it may be worth it for the serious gamblers (although from reading the forums, it seems a lot of the serious Spanish gamblers are moving to the UK). For someone like me who only bets small-ish stakes, I don't think it'd be worth the hassle. In any case, I think you'd still have the problems of depositing and withdrawing - obviously anything involving a Spanish card or a Spanish bank account is going to be flagged up as a problem. And I *think* (although could be wrong) I read somewhere that the likes of Moneybookers weren't allowed to deposit funds originating from Spanish accounts into a UK-based bookies account.

In any case, if the government actually got their fingers out of their arses and clarified once and for all the issue of taxation, I'd have no problem with using the .es sites. But with the current doubts, even if you only use, say, 1000€ of "real money" over the course of a year, win a bit, lose a bit, win a bit more, etc., you can still easily end up staking 10k, getting back 10k. In real terms you've broken even, but according to one possible interpretation of the law, you could be liable to get taxed on the 10k you've "won". All the time there's that risk, there's no way I'm going near the online sites.

Unfortunately I think the government have got bigger things to worry about than easing the fears of what they seem to see as a few degenerates who like a bet