Many online gamblers are biting their nails at the news that PayPal will release payment records from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. On the surface, the IRS is looking for people with hidden assets in foreign banks and foreign banks, but online gamblers fear getting caught up in the internet. Not only are there concerns about winning tax-free gambling, but there is also the fact that Internet gambling is illegal in the United States.
PayPal has put a lot of effort into distancing itself from online gambling, especially in the U.S., but that hasn't always been the case. When the company first started, by 2002, they were happily in business for almost a year and a half with concerns about a lot of online gambling. At that point, PayPal was accused of providing services to offshore gambling sites that opposed two parts of the U.S. criminal law. PayPal paid a huge $10 million settlement to represent the profits it made from illegal gaming transactions.
Earlier in July, in an ongoing U.S. Justice Department investigation into Swiss bank UBS, one of their former private bankers, Bradley Birkenfeld, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. He acknowledged that the bank helped wealthy U.S. citizens evade income tax laws and hide some $20 billion worth of assets from the government. The Justice Department has required a federal judge to hand over any information about U.S. customers who may have used famous Swiss bank secrets to avoid paying taxes.
In 2006, a U.S. federal court ruled that the IRS could request records of all American customers who have financial accounts with foreign banks, including credit, debit, or bank accounts. In January this year, PayPal sent a statement to all customers who matched the description to inform them that the company would release the records to the IRS. All records were ordered to be handed over to the IRS by the end of April.
The U.S. government is supposedly tracking down people who have evaded taxes, but there is nothing to stop them from prosecuting online gamblers retroactively. Back in 2006, it passed a law known as UIGEA, which required banks and other financial institutions to block transactions arising from illegal gambling activities, with the Justice Department aggressively tracking foreign gambling companies. Some have been accused of acts committed before the UIGEA passage, as the Justice Department has always claimed to be illegal, even though the U.S. has yet to figure out all the implications from the law or how to enforce the ban. 바카라사이트
Now American gamblers fear they will be the next target, and are angry that PayPal will give up the record too easily. PayPal is believed to have been implementing a policy to ensure privacy and confidentiality of customers' financial information, but they apparently think these policies have been replaced at the request of the government. In the end, PayPal didn't even wait for a court order or subpoena, just handed over the information when the IRS requested it. Industry experts expect customers to begin filing civil lawsuits against PayPal over what they consider to be a breach of contract.