Online casino tax not imminent

The subject of a tax on online casinos has been in the Irish casino news for some time and yet it has still not been implemented and now it appears that there could be further delays much to the annoyance of Michael Noonen the Irish Finance Minister. There has been a tax of 1% at bookmakers for a long time and the idea was to apply the same tax to online casinos and other online gambling but of course that would require an online casino to separate out which are Irish casino players and which are not. This is information which every online casino has but they are not keen to pay tax and as most if not all of the online casinos including our own Paddy Power casino are registered and licensed overseas it becomes more difficult to enforce. Only recently as was reported in the Irish casino news the UK has managed to introduce licensing requirements for anybody who operates in the UK but Ireland has so far not done so. The most recent delays are apparently due to questions being raised by Malta which may seem strange until you realise that Malta is one of the largest online casino licensing authorities with many online casinos such as All Irish Casino being registered there and operating under that jurisdiction. It would seem that Malta is concerned that if online casinos are licensed in other countries they may lose some income. How long the delay might be or indeed whether it will be introduced at all is unknown at the moment and once things get tangled up in European legislation it can take a very long time but it seems unlikely that any change will take place within the first half of this year. The tax does not affect any players at online casinos so it is purely interest only.