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?
Would it actually boost government revenue, or could it backfire and discourage people from gambling altogether, knowing it’s already hard to win and when they finally do, they still have to pay taxes?
The thing is that in this tax the state, according to officials, is doing two useful things at once. Firstly, it shows people how expensive gambling can be because of the tax (I often see that in countries it is about 15 percent, and this is a shock) and the second goal the state pursues is to increase the inflow of money into state funds.
But unfortunately, this money is not used to build hospitals for gambling addicts. This money goes to who knows where: perhaps to cars and houses for officials. And so it turns out that the state does not care about ordinary gamblers.