It was great news this week for the Czech poker community and anyone planning on visiting to play. The Parliament voted for a package of improvements to the Gambling Act, which will now see live and online poker freed from some very strict fees and rules.
Czech poker receives a welcome boost as Pirate Party fights for players
There were serious concerns that the new Gambling Act 2020 would hit Czech poker players and visitors to the country’s casinos hard, but the outcome was the reverse – taxes frozen and the punishing paragraph 59 canceled.
Many online poker operators do business in the Czech Republic, including the likes of Pokermaster and PPPoker, as well as last year’s introduction of partypoker to the Czech online market.
The small nation also boasts the world’s largest poker room outside of Vegas, Kings Casino in Rozvadov, which recently hosted the World Series of Poker Europe.
Kings is also a regular destination for thousands of Germans, among other nationalities, hosting the German Poker Open and partypoker’s MILLIONS tour.
Kings Casino owner Leon Tsoukernik was naturally extremely happy with the outcome of the parliamentary resolution.
He told VIP-Grinders: “This is a very good result for poker here in the Czech Republic. For live poker and online poker, it’s almost the perfect outcome.”
The details of the changes are very significant. Previously both live and online operators were unable to run tournaments with rake lower than 5%, which meant no freerolls for one thing.
There was also a very tough clause that meant tournaments could not start with less than 50% of guarantees made up from player buy-ins.
Amendments put to Parliament by the Pirate Party during the Gambling Act debate sought to relieve casinos and online rooms of these fairly brutal rules, and last week saw them succeed.
Czech Pirate Party MP Tomáš Martínek was the main driving force behind the amendments in Parliament. Moreover, the Association of Poker Players has been providing excellent arguments and support over recent years.
Potential Poker Tax Changes
There were also proposals for changes in the taxation of poker, and this was another area of great concern. There were plans to raise tax rates for operators from 23% to 30%.
This would inevitably have been passed on in some way to players. So there was a great relief when news came through that only the lottery would face a tax hike. Poker emerged unscathed from these changes.
There was even a bonus for Czech poker players, who had been staring at a proposed tax ceiling on earnings of 100,000 Czech crowns (about €4000).
A compromise was reached that will see that bar kept at CZK 1 million per year (about €40,000). The 15% tax now also allows for deductions, a pretty decent outcome for players.
The changes are likely to come into effect on January 1st, 2020, and could produce a poker boom of sorts. The country might now become even more appealing for locals and visitors.
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