Tax Free Poker

Rakeback – How to Avoid Poker Tax

This site is about tax free poker and how players can find themselves in the absurd situation where both their winnings and their losses are being taxed. Some country’s laws regarding gambling are not very cleverly designed and even though a player has earned money from the game, he sometimes has to pay his winnings in tax. This is of course ridicules. However, there is one form of tax that all players in all countries have to pay; The Rake.

All poker rooms deduct a percentage from every pot that is moved across the felt. The standard rake for online poker is 5%. A $10 pot is therefore raked with 50 cent. There is always a max rake, called cap, and it is usually $3. No matter how big the pot becomes the poker room will only deduct $3. Maybe this doesn’t sound much, but I can assure you that it becomes lot of money in the long run. A poker player that only plays a couple of hours a day often pay thousands of dollars in rake every month. If the game would have been rake-free, the money would have ended up in his bankroll. Now it doesn’t. Rake is a poker tax you can’t get away from.

However, now you have a chance to get some of that rake back. If you sign up with a rakeback deal offered by one of the many affiliates active on the net, you will get a percentage of the rake refunded every month. A standard poker rakeback deal is around 30%, and if you have paid $1000 in rake you will get $300 back. That is money that would have ended up in the poker compaies’ pockets if you would have played without rake back. Why should you give the poker rooms more money than you have to?