Online Gambling Conference to Focus on Swedish Tax and Law Issues

Stockholm, Sweden will be hosting the i-Gaming online casino industry conference, from April 11 to 13. The primary purpose of the meeting will be to examine tax and regulatory issues within the Swedish and Scandinavian online casino market. The market for online casino in Sweden experienced a spike in business activity over the past few months which forced conference organizers to refocus the agenda more on taxes and regulation than previously anticipated.

The Swedish online gambling industry is unhappy about the new views of the Swedish Tax Authority (Svenska Dagbladet) regarding the taxation of Swedish gamblers at foreign online poker website and not Swedish poker rooms. The situation was enflamed after the recent reports of a $150,000,000US tax bill possibly faced by the 20 year old Swedish online poker pro, Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom.

The organizers of the i-Gaming conference stated that “the Swedish tax authorities are scrutinizing poker sites registered out of Sweden and according to Swedish gambling laws, are still considered by the authorities as tax liable in Sweden, Svenska Dagbladet estimates SEK 100 billions of tax revenue online gambling can be at stake.”

The conference is expected to draw Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finish Gaming Authorities, legal experts and CEOs from Bonnier Lottery, Betsson, Nordic Gaming Group, PAF, BET24, Betsafe and other VIPs. The remainder of the “broad-spectrum discussions” is expected to focus on the European gambling regulatory developments.