ONLINE GAMBLING LICENSES COSTA RICA

© Mandy - Fotolia.com

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!

Russia and Cyprus sign customs agreement - Cyprus Mail

Cyprus is working hard to improve its image with regards to anti-money laundering. One recent move was to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Russia in order to tackle Customs offences. The countries have worked out a mechanism dealing with offences and violations of Customs regulations of the two countries. Provisions of the mechanism will address prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of Customs offences, an exchange of information and to ensure an accurate assessment and calculation of taxes, duties and other customs charges on export and import of goods.

Read more at Cyprus Mail: Russia and Cyprus sign customs agreement - Cyprus Mail

www.tax-corp.com

Gabriel greift Schweizer Banken an

"Bandenmäßige Steuerhinterziehung"

Sigmar Gabriel holt erneut gegen die Schweizer Banken aus. Nach Ansicht des SPD-Chefs betreiben die Institute organisierte Kriminalität. Auf dem Juso-Bundeskongress in Magdeburg forderte er deshalb den Einsatz des Generalbundesanwalts - und eine Besteuerung der Finanzmärkte.

Mehr über das Steuerabkommen mit der Schweiz über unversteuerte Kapitalerträge und Gabriels Rede auf Spiegel Online.

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

Russland

Zypern nicht mehr auf der schwarzen Liste

Mit der Anordnung Nr. N 115H vom 21.08.2012 hat das Finanzministerium der Russischen Föderation die Entfernung Zyperns von der Liste nicht kooperativer Länder („Schwarze Liste“) bekanntgegeben. Die neue Regelung tritt ab dem 01.01.2013 in Kraft.

Dieser Schritt wird die ohnehin enge Kooperation zwischen der Russischen Föderation und Zypern nochmals stärken.

Die wichtigsten Auswirkungen der Entfernung aus der Liste sind:

Nach Sect. 284, par. 3 des russischen Steuerkodexes unterliegen von einem ausländischen Tochterunternehmen an die russische Muttergesellschaft gezahlte Dividenden in Russland keiner Steuer, wenn die russische Muttergesellschaft mindestens 50 % der ausländischen Tochtergesellschaft hält und diese Beteiligung seit mindestens 365 Tagen gehalten wird, und wenn das Tochterunternehmen nicht in einem auf der “Schwarzen Liste” geführten Land ansässig ist.

Dividendenzahlungen einer zyprischen Tochtergesellschaft an ihre russische Muttergesellschaft unterliegen somit keiner Kapitalsteuer in Russland mehr. Bisher unterlagen von einem zyprischen Tochterunternehmen eingenommene Dividendenzahlungen einer 9 %igen Kapitalsteuer

Die neuen, auf Geschäfte mit Gesellschaften, welche in Ländern der „Schwarzen Liste“ ansässig sind, anzuwendenden, verschärften Vorschriften für Verrechnungspreise, welche am 01.01.2013 in Kraft treten werden, gelten somit nicht für Geschäfte mit Gesellschaften in Zypern.

Taxation Planning via Cyprus

Use Cyprus as a base for international tax planning!

Today with the tightened global economic crisis, businesses try to preserve growth, and savings is no doubt one major solution.

Many international business companies use Cyprus as a base for international tax planning. Investors also use Cyprus as a vehicle in order to maximize after tax profit on global investments. Such income, arising from investment deeds through Cyprus, shall benefit from the provisions of Cyprus tax system and double taxation avoidiance treaties network (DTT). Cyprus maintains Double Taxation Avoidance Treaties with more than 40 countries.

Taxation Sytem

The Cyprus tax system offers to investors and companies several benefits together with a very low corporation tax (10%) for tax-resident companies. BUT income from dividends, appreciation of shares and bonds and from the purchase and sale of the aforementioned or from the sales of participations is not taxable.
80 % of the income from Intellectual Property are deductable as deemed expenses. The remaining 20 % of income from Intellectual Property is taxable by the usual corporate tax of 12,5 %, thus resulting in an effective taxe rate of 2,5 % of the whole income from Intellectual Property only.
Royalties and licenses for the use of rights outside of Cyprus are not subject to withholding tax.

www.taxsavingcorp.com

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