Regulating online poker and sites by "taxing" the rake?

[Richas]

The UK system is 15% of the sites gross profit to the taxman and no income tax. Even this is relatively unattractive to major sites (bookmakers have the same deal).

Someone said gambling should be treated as Income for Tax, many other places don't see it this way they take the money from the site and ignore the punter,

Shifting the tax with no increased rake to the site might help winning players and make little difference to losing players but it would hurt the sites at 50%, shoot 15% hurts. Plus it would never be competitive internationally and differentiated rakes/tax by nationality could not be WTO compliant.

IMHO a bit of a no hoper - go for a UK system and make clear the 15% of gross is more than the income tax on the few winers.