Costa Rica Taking Control of Online Casino Industry

September 13, 2010 | News Category: Gaming Law

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Costa Rica has got a fairly bad reputation as far as safe and secure online casinos are concerned. However, it now seems that they are trying, at least in one small way, to take the online casinos and other online gambling establishments in hand.

The current government, with Laura Chinchilla at its head, has decided to regulate online gambling more strictly than it was before, when it was particularly lax. This will possibly give Costa Rica a better name as an online gambling jurisdiction, however, this is likely to take some time because thing have degenerated so badly until now.

The regulations have been so loose, and almost non-existent, that many rogue online casinos have used Costa Rica as their online gambling jurisdiction. It seems that there was a large influx of online gambling companies that based themselves in Costa Rica when the United States shut their doors to online gambling.

Those who have been operating under these mostly unregulated conditions are in for a surprise at the harder line that the Costa Rican government has chosen to take. There will now be far stricter regulations imposed on all online gambling operations, and there is also a new tax proposal that is likely to frighten off those that do not wish to operate honest businesses. In fact, many online gambling operators that are currently operating in Costa Rica have threatened to leave because of the harsh taxes that have been proposed.

Because so many online gambling operators threatened to relocate because of the new harsh taxes, the Costa Rican government has said that they will revise the current strict tax proposal.

The Comisión Nacional Reguladora de Apuestas y Juegos de Azar has been set up to regulate and oversee online gambling activities in Costa Rica, for both online casinos and also for all other types of online gambling sites that are based in Costa Rica.

Online gambling operations will be obligated to disclose how much they earn, or at least how much profit they generate, in order to help the government to determine what should be their "share."

The Costa Rican government do not want to make their new tax levels, and licensing fess , too harsh, because they do not wish to lose the current online gambling operators, who have threatened to take their business elsewhere, where they will be met with less harsh taxation, and fewer restrictions than are being offered in Costa Rica at this time.