Costa Rica May Tax Online Gambling

Costa Rica is one of the worlds largest on gambling sites operations. The two main reasons is first, there are no online gambling that specify licensing laws. So Corporations, foreign groups can operate internet gambling sites under simple “data processing license”. Second, Costa Rica is considered as a “tax haven”. International online gambling service provides a very strong financial incentive to base their operations in the country because of foreign-source income is not taxed locally

Unfortunately this may not be the case for long. Laura Chinchilla the new president of Costa Rica (sworn in May 8th) has already talked about plans to change Costa Rican Gambling Laws. The new president wants to tax online gambling. Financial reasons is the main reason behind this move. Costa Rica takes only 14.8% of local income as tax, which is not enough to fund the big crime fighting changes that Chinchilla wants take place.

Chinchilla hopes to bring in an additional 1% of the country’s GDP by imposing taxes on casinos and online gambling sites in Costa Rica . This increase in annual state income would be a quick and easy way for the new president to fund her battle against local crimes and drug trafficking.

So many of internet gambling sites that operate out of Costa Rica target players on that site of the world, especially in North America. US and Canada are currently working out provisions which could see local online gambling offerings. If this happens, it could be the down fall to Costa Rica’s hold on the industry, especially if the current tax incentives go away. While Chinchilla understands that taxing online gambling is only a quick fix, changes in the approach taken by Costa Rica’s northerly neighbors may stop her plan sooner than she thinks.