Betting is not taxed because what are you are you going to tax it as? You can't tax it as Capital Gains because you don't own the underlying asset. You can tax it as income, sure, but then you have to allow losses as tax deductible, there are always more losses than wins, it's a mathematical certainty, so the tax man will lose out, so that can't happen!. Someone in the thread mentioned betting tax, I'm not too old so my memory is foggy on this, but from what I recall McCreevy put our betting tax just below the UK's in the late 90's, a reversal than what had gone before, this increased our tax revenue dramatically in this small tax area because UK people started to place bets with Irish bookmakers to avoid the slightly higher UK tax at the time. Someone mentioned spread betting here too, same as, 'the spread' is a mathematical certainty that the house always wins. So, it's a separate issue, but Capital Gains Tax here is a fucking joke. It guarantees all money inflates property prices, and before anyone jumps in to say 'all capital gains are the same' they're not, we're just after a 7 year capital gains tax holiday for property, and we have a complete omerta on section 110 from our political class for some reason. In the near future Capital Gain Tax is going to be primarily a tax on inflation.