Monday, February 26, 2007

Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is reportedly set to announce
plans in next month's budget to entice offshore gambling firms to be
regulated and licenced in the UK in return for a tax. The new tax, which
will be called the Remote Gaming Duty, would allow gambling companies to be
licenced in the UK but still be based overseas and could be as little as two
or three per cent. The nature of the tax would also allow these companies to
avoid paying British Value Added Tax (VAT), the very reason they are based
abroad in places such as Gibraltar in the first place. An exact figure for
the new Remote Gaming Duty is yet to be decided but the government are aware
that anything too high will deter companies from paying a tax they do not
necessarily need to pay, even if they do want the kudos of being a UK
licenced company. The new tax will be introduced come the implementation of
the new Gambling Bill 2005. However, it is unlikely that remote gambling
companies would relocate to the UK completely if they had to pay a tax on
gross wins, which could be as high as 40 per cent. The UK government's
stance on online gambling is a complete mirror image to that of the US,
whose tough clampdown last year on online casinos and online poker caused
panic within the industry and wiped $6.5 billion off the value of the
market. The treasury have long been eager to get their hands on the tax from
online gambling companies. With the introduction of the Remote Gaming Duty
they could receive as much as £3 million a year from each company that
decides they want to be licenced and regulated in the UK.