A Piece of Gambling Heaven

The Isle of Man enjoys a unique status: it doesn’t belong to the United Kingdom but, at the same time, their close to 100.000 citizens are British. The local government has a considerable level of autonomy, something that has been happening since the 1950s, and as a result extremely low taxes are offered.

Comparing taxes with the UK, we see that the top level tax rate is 20% on the Isle of Man, while on the mainland it’s 45%. Following the same logic, corporate rates are 0%, against 20% in the UK. No surprise than the Manx economy is considered a tax heaven.

Online gambling economy

The economy based on farming, fishing and tourism that happened 50 years ago is now shifting to an online economy, where one tenth of the income is already originated by online gambling, and one third is coming from financial services.

The tiny Isle of Man has an economic growth three times bigger than the one in the UK. Low taxes and a pragmatic political system, where for example one of the ministers is a former electrician, explain it, considering the other economic activates aren’t high.

Their pragmatic approach makes the mobile reception superior to the one existing in London, which is also explained by the internet cables between Ireland and England, being Man in between, creating the necessary infra-structure for effective mobile gambling.

Similarly to about everything in the Isle of Man, also the online gambling sector is highly efficient, and the internet casinos are fortunate to be in a jurisdiction with flexible rules, but also high standards, as the seal of approval of Isle of Man regulator has the highest quality, according to the worldwide known PokerStars, which headquarters and close to Douglas, a city in the island.

Gambling Supervision Commission

The Gambling Supervision Commission was established in 1962 and regulates all gambling activities in the island. There is only one land-based casino, but since 2001 that online gambling is legal, being the local operators – obviously – licensed by the local Commission.

This Commission does more than regulating the domestic gambling market, as its main function might be issuing gambling licenses for international sites, like PokerStars among dozens of others. The full list can be found here: https://www.gov.im/categories/business-and-industries/gambling-and-e-gaming/licence-holders/

The Isle of Man is a global online market which can accept players from all over the world, including the United Kingdom, being their licensing one of the few in the globe with UK whitelisted certificates. To demonstrate the importance of this whitelisting certification enough to say that the UK Gambling Commission only accepts gambling operators licensed from five territories in the entire world, being this one of those.

Being licensed by the Isle of Man is, therefore, a highly coveted recognition, and it’s no surprise that highly prestigious online gambling houses, like PokerStars Paddy Power or Microgaming are registered here.

Such a scenario easily explains how the Isle of Man economy is already powered by 10% from online gambling, and the situation seems to be configured to increase these numbers even further.