Costa Rica
While the Central American country Costa Rica is home to more than 200 online gambling companies, it does not actually have legislation specifically designed to deal with gambling over the Internet. The Costa Rican government is of the opinion that the act of wagering does not take place at the location of the operator's gaming servers, so companies residing in the country are able to legally offer Internet wagers to customers all over the world as long as they refuse to accept wagers from individuals located in Costa Rica.
Because of the absence of legislation dealing with online gambling, the businesses and operations of Costa Rica-based gaming companies are not subject to the regulations, monitoring, and testing to which most offshore governments subject their licensees. Most companies are self-regulated. Because there is no official regime to recognize license holders, there is no betting or gaming tax. Instead, companies operate under a "data processing" license.
In September 2007, the Partido Accion Ciudadana introduced a bill that would tax sportsbooks and other electronic betting operations based on the number of employees on their payroll. The annual tax begins at firms with 10 employees with a fee of 10 million colons a year and reaches the top of the scale with a tax of 28.4 million colons for companies with more than 61 employees.
In August of 2009, the finance ministry plans to present a bill to the legislature that will regulate online casino operations located there. The bill would introduce a tax on online casino operators within the country.
This proposal is the latest in what has been a long and mostly fruitless attempt on the part of the government to tax the betting industry.
The Arias administration is also seeking to set a licensing scheme in place that would require online casinos and sportsbooks to register with the Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Comercio.
