According to a story in Card Player Europe, Italian poker pros could be the target of an investigation by Italy’s Italian Revenue Agency and the Guardia di Finanza. The agency will be looking into the income of Italian Poker Pros as compared to their declared income.

Amongst the areas the agencies will be scrutinizing will be winnings from both foreign and domestic online poker rooms; sponsorship deals and royalties received; as well as their foreign assets kept in banks around the world.

A letter, along with a form, was sent to a number of Italian poker players and must be filled out and returned to their local tax office. Similar to Swedish laws that exempt winnings from domestic sites from taxation, Italian poker players DO have to pay taxes on winnings from online poker sites located outside of Italy.

According to the article in Card Player Europe: “Foreign bank accounts associated with online gaming will be monitored and if the balance or any movements in and out of the account exceeds €10,000, it should be declared as a financial asset that could produce foreign income which will then be taxed accordingly.”

Italy recently legalized online poker and in doing so has implemented a 20% tax on all revenues by licensed online poker sites operating in the country; it now appears that the government is also looking at the players on these sites to make sure they are paying their fair-share of taxes as well.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 4th, 2011 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.