ONLINE GAMBLING LICENSES COSTA RICA

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Often we are asked by clients, if there are other jurisdictions than Isle of Man, Gibraltar, United Kingdom or Malta to access the international gambling business.

Costa Rica is the Mecca of online casinos and poker rooms because it has the best infrastructure available in the Caribbean basin - its reliable telecommunication system, its multilingual workers, and its lack of online gaming and internet regulations. A lot of online casinos have chosen Costa Rica as registration country because of the fact that there are no direct prohibition on gambling business and no necessity to receive a special license.


Foremost Costa Rica could be one alternative, but one has to consider a few things: 

In practice, you do not require a license for internet gambling, but you do require a commercial license.

It is legal to conduct this businesses activity in Costa Rica and you only need:

• A Costa Rican corporation or company registered in Costa Rica.
• Registration with the tax authorities.
• A land use permit.
• A permit from Ministry of Health.
• A commercial license.

Costa Rica has legislation to restrict land based gambling, but according to the legal system, those laws are not interpreted as extending to internet gambling.

Tax Saving Corporation will register the corporation and obtain the permits required from all governmental institutions.

Once this is done, we obtain the Commercial License in the name of the corporation so the client is sure that his company will have no impediments to develop the intended objective.

To this end, most corporations registered in Costa Rica, obtain a license. 

In order to create a corporation in Costa Rica that will allow for licensing, it must deal in network administration or internet administration. All internet addresses from Costa Rica must be blocked from the server, since it is Costa Rica's strict policy that none of their citizens participate in online gambling. One must also create an offshore merchant account to deal with the transactions.

Due to the absence of legislation and oversight for online gambling, companies based in or registered through Costa Rica are not subject to monitoring or other regulations that many offshore companies are. This also means that since there isn't a body to govern gambling, companies are self-regulated and not required to pay betting or gambling tax. 

Shelf companies

Our law firm in Costa Rica offers shelf companies with proper licences. This shelf company enables the client to operate gambling right after the transferral of the company. Costs for a shelf company are ca. USD 28,500.00

Legal allegations on the offer of gambling from Costa Rica
Costa Rica does not demand – in opposite to other juridictions – a gambling licence with the corresponding preliminaries (business plan, projection of profit and loss, general terms & conditions, prevention of compulsive gambling, high initial capital), as long as the gambling is offered only to persons abroad Costa Rica. 

By nature, this lack of regulations has legal effects:

In fact a gambling company in Costa Rica may not offer its games to residents in countries that have laws or other regulations on gambling (especially countries of the EU / EEC, Switzerland, USA, Canada and Russia, and so on). 

Offering games there will be utterly illegal.

On the other hand action for injunction from other states against companies in Costa Rica will not clamp down as Costa Rica has no legal assistance agreements with other countries.

Further one has to consider if there are still enough players willing to participate on games of a company that is not regulated in any terms and has no sufficient initial capital.

In the end it is up to the client to balance these facts.

Legal alternatives

A legal way to offer gambling throughout the European Union, could be a licence on Malta.

Furthermore, Malta has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake that allows for the sharing of investigative 
findings and materials regarding existing and prospective licensees. 

The objective of the Memorandum of Understanding is to enhance effective regulation within and between the two jurisdictions through an efficient and workable channel for the exchange information.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is an organization that licenses a large number of online casinos and online poker rooms. The Kahnawáke Gaming Commission was established in June 1996. The Commission is empowered to regulate and control gaming and related activities within and from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawáke. These gaming activities are regulated in accordance with the highest principles of honesty and integrity.

For your assitance, we also offer a free exposeè on gambling. You can download this here. 

For more information, please contact us!

Tango with the Tax Man

Multinationals Find Loopholes Galore in Europe

© Federal Ministry of Finance

Large multinationals, many of them based in the United States, are masters at avoiding taxes on profits made abroad. Apple, for example, paid just $100 million in taxes in 2010 on overseas profits of $13 billion. But Germany would like to put a stop to the practice, and is finding some influential support.

Read more at the english edition of Spiegel Online.


BY SVEN BÖLL, MARKUS DETTMER, FRANK DOHMEN, CHRISTOPH PAULY, and CHRISTIAN REIERMANN

German President agreed on DTA with Uruguay

Germany and Uruguay have signed a bilateral double taxation agreement, thereby strengthening economic ties between the two countries. Federal President Wulff agreed to the treaty yesterday in Berlin.

During his visit to South America in March 2010, Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle met with the country’s new President Mujica, and his Uruguayan counterpart Almagro in Montevideo, and announced his intention to strengthen the political, cultural and economic ties with Uruguay.

Almagro underlined the fact that Germany was one of Uruguay’s closest partners within the European Union, as a key buyer of Uruguayan exports. Luis Almagro also emphasized his intention to continue the course of economic stabilization and growth for his country.

Uruguay managed to quickly overcome the effects of the recent global economic and financial crisis, by international comparison. According to the German Foreign Ministry, sustained high growth and a highly trained population has made Uruguay an attractive location for German companies. The areas of renewable energy, infrastructure, farming and tourism are of particular interest to the German economy, it notes.

The DTA can be read here : DTA Germany-Uruguay (German only)

TaSaCo, London

16 October 2011

Financial Stability Board reports to G20 on progress of financial regulatory reforms

The Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) reported to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors today on progress in the financial regulatory reform programme.

In connection with this, the FSB is publishing today:

• a letter by the FSB Chair to the G20, sent ahead of their meeting, reporting on the progress being made in the following priority reform areas: (i) building resilient financial institutions; (ii) ending “too big to fail”; (iii) strengthening the oversight and regulation of shadow banking activities; (iv) completing OTC derivatives and other reforms to create core continuous markets; and (v) implementing agreed G20 reforms in a timely and consistent manner;
• a report on progress in extending the framework for Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions (G-SIFIs) to domestic systemically important banks;
• a report on progress in strengthening the oversight and regulation of the shadow banking system;
• a joint report from the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board on their progress in converging their standards, together with a report on enhancements to the governance of the IASB.

At today’s meeting the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors reaffirmed their commitment to common global standards by pursuing the financial regulatory reform agenda according to their agreed timetable in an internationally consistent and non-discriminatory manner.

The reports are available on the FSB’s website, www.financialstabilityboard.org/

Strengthening the Oversight and Regulation of Shadow Banking

Progress Report to G20 Ministers and Governors

At the Cannes Summit in November 2011, the G20 Leaders agreed to strengthen the oversight

and regulation of the shadow banking system, and endorsed the Financial Stability Board (FSB)’s initial recommendations with a work plan to further develop them in the course of

2012.

The G20 Leaders also asked the FSB to report its progress for review at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in April 2012.

Direct link to FSB's Progress Report to G20 Ministers and Governors