1)its condidered gambling by the ato so no tax, but i think they are reviewing it currently.
2)their service frankly is terrible. if you are looking to trade anything other than small volume than they suck. takes ages for trades to be filled, numerous "requotes" etc etc. for small volume trades however no real problems. i only use them these days for overseas shares/indexes. very convenient having access to global markets from one platform. and their software is very good.
all in all i would generally prefer to pay commission for trades on the asx, at least you know what the price will be. one bad fill on a sizeable trade and their is many trades commission.
