By nature, businesses are taxable, so it makes sense that casinos should be taxed. But in some countries, they also tax individual gambling winnings. That got me thinking, what’s the real purpose behind that? Most of us gamblers are overall losers anyway, so what impact does taxing the winnings really have?
Does it count as an income to the individual gambler? Because if it does then, it’s taxable for real.
Now, I’m not living in a jurisdiction that gets tasked this way but just recently, we have a form of task where every money that goes beyond a certain amount, it doesn’t matter if it’s you having to send this money between your accounts on different banks. So long as it’s above a particular amount, the government takes a a small fee on it. Now this fee isn’t the transfer fee or anything, just a way to fund government purse.
The government is always going to find a way to make some money for themselves and this isn’t exactly about discouraging gambling, just a means to generating funds.
It’s tax on winnings, so technically it’s part of your income, and we don’t really have a choice, either pay it or break the law.
The thing is, when the government creates a law, they expect everyone to follow it, especially when it comes to gambling, where they know there’s a chance to earn big tax revenue. What’s unfair is that they also target the gamblers, even though most of us don’t actually win. Sure, we win sometimes, but in the long run, we still lose.
So it just feels like extra pressure on us, but they also know we’re not going to quit, because as the saying goes, winners never quit, and quitters never win.