The question of our readers arises again and again whether online casinos are legal or illegal, i.e. allowed or not. You have to differentiate between basic things in order to be able to answer this question. However, there is no precise legislation, because online casinos are “still” in a gray area.
The general rule is: where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge. A distinction must be made here between criminal law and tax law.
There is nothing criminal against playing in online casinos with licenses. If the state were to sue here, it would have to sue itself or the state in which the licenses were issued. For this reason, online casinos and playing there are clearly allowed.
It gets a little more complicated from a tax point of view. Here the players have to prove very precisely that the winnings came from “real gambling”. Poker is the exception, because the tax office does not assign the game of poker to gambling in most cases. This means that the profits would arise from a commercial activity and would therefore be fully taxable.
Legal, illegal, what now?
If you look at the advertising on TV, gambling and online casinos can actually only be legal. As a rule, politicians, some of whom are certainly also playing in online casinos, would have long since come up with the idea of banning this type of advertising. But as long as the gaming licenses from Schleswig Holstein are in place, TV advertising will continue to run.
The whole power of the game only comes into play when larger amounts are won in the online casino and these are paid out. Who should be able to check whether you are playing online or not? Whether casinos are legal or illegal, I would simply determine the existence of the aforementioned license.
