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© KYODOJapan considers withholding tax system on casino winnings by foreigners
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Bugle Boy of Company B
If the government is going to take withholding tax, any money I lose at the casino should be considered a tax loss and allowed to be written off as a deduction.
rgcivilian1
I see all kinds of laundering operations starting up.
oldman_13
Good.
Disillusioned
So, they intend to set up these casinos with limited visits and ridiculous entrance fees for native Japanese and now they want to tax the heck out of foreign visitors' winnings. Obviously, this is not about setting up casino resorts for international visitors. It's only about raising revenue through more taxes. Nobody is going to go to these casinos.
InspectorGadget
Following on from this, all Japanese nationals should have to register their MyNumber information with he Casinos for taxation purposes. Then any winnings get taxed like any other income.
SaikoPhysco
I guess the pop-up Yakuza casinos must already be paying Politicians pretty well, if they were not then Japan wouldn't be fighting to vigorously to keep them from actually opening.
garymalmgren
Nobody is going to go to these casinos.
You wanna lay a bet on that?
gary
wanderlust
Guess the same 'oyajis' who made the confusing partial consumption tax rise from 8% - 10% are working on this; only they could contemplate and complicate such a proposal.
BertieWooster
To begin with, we DO NOT need casinos! It wouldn't be a bad idea to get rid of other semi legal forms of gambling too, such as pachinko parlours.
Wakarimasen
Tax tax tax. governments around the world just want to take as much as they can. Why should the government take a portion of gambling winnings? What is the intellectual basis for doing so?
TheLongTermer
i could see Yokohama benefiting from a casino, it already has a large foreign population, easy port call access and long history with international events.
kurisupisu
This is not any type of sustainable beneficial model forJapan.
What a shame that TPTB In Japan are so bereft of any type of high level thought process....
stormcrow
I don't gamble so I wouldn't go anyway, but with this govt. tax scheme thrown in really dampens any desire I may have about going.
Also, it's kind of like instead of the mob skimming off the top it's the government doing it. It seems like a rather fine line between the two, doesn't it?
BTW, all of the above opinions & comments are quite good.
redelmotalking
And yet another example of “how can we use gaijin to fix our problems”....we’ve had the lofty goals to bring millions of tourists in and tax them, the visas to bring in hundreds of thousands of short term workers to fix labour shortages as long as they don’t actually settle down and stay, and now this latest one. These ideas all look great in the Japanese only meetings in kasumigaseki but really don’t play too well in the real world where gaijins have options other than Japan to come to....
Ex_Res
Well, I don't gamble myself, but this seems to highlight Japans underlying mentality. Japan thinks that the rest of the world is it's Cash Cow.
Alexandre T. Ishii
AI (artificial Inteligence) calculator will easily resolve it, just to display in consumption tax 10%. The issues will go more to greedy people involved in corruption, bribery, "sontaku", "inpei" and something else, this government of Mr. Abe I don't how far he is going, as much as Casino was approved by congress to him. I want to work at one of those Casino, probably the closest, Nagasaki...
juminRhee
"You tax me here, you tax me there,
You even tax my underwear.
You tax my home, you tax my phone,
You go and tax my family tome.
You tax my cheque, you tax my deck,
You come and tax all my tech.
Tax man"
Just one tax please. One
sf2k
making it easier for money laundering
Eppee
Seriously, who is going to go to those ?!
In the region the serious gamblers are the Chinese and they are already going to Macao, why go to Japan and pay taxes ...
macv
Do foreign countries charge withholding tax on Japanese gamblers winnings? If not they must reciprocate.
talaraedokko
Of course. Why else would the government allow casinos if there were no money involved.
talaraedokko
It's only a matter of moths before the CCP goes down. Chinese gambling houses just need to say it's tax-free or at least less than here. A lot of infrastructure investment would go down the drain. Our host government here would never do that..would they?
mikeylikesit
The government licenses the gambling establishment so that it can exist, and it prints the money that people use to gamble. What other intellectual basis does the government need other than "because it can"?
Chromehearts88
The conclusion is of the story is the Japanese Government is desperate for money.
OssanAmerica
This is nothing new, as the article says the US and South Korea already do this. A foreigner can't even sell property in the US without depositing 15% of the sale price to cover taxes. Has nothing to do with being Japanese or Gaijin. It's aimed at people who are not residents and can leave without paying any tax. Of course the policy makes it unattractive compared to casino places that don't. But it's never hurt Las Vegas.
kibousha
The only thing I regret is that these casinos will be in Osaka. The city is already a cesspool of crime compares to the rest of Japan, and now they're adding fire into it.
Peeping_Tom
"Do foreign countries charge withholding tax on Japanese gamblers winnings?"
Did you even bother reading the article? Or is it a comprehension thingy?!
"Countries like the United States and South Korea already employ a withholding tax system for winnings at their casinos."
I don't hear any noises about these two, so I guess it's OK for them but not Japan!
Mlodinow
My understanding is that only large wins in the USA get taxed (more than $1,000 or so) and that they have to be on bets at odds greater than 300 to 1 (meaning jackpots and the like). This means that players of most table games will not face withholding tax.
Unless they set fair tax-free winning margins and a reasonable tax rate I don't think they are going to take many people away from Macau and Vegas. A handful of medium sized casinos dotted around Japan hardly offers the experience either of the big two do.