8/1/2022

Gambling Tax Uk 2019

  1. These non-cash gambling winnings are taxed depending on their fair market value. Fortunately, gambling taxes are not progressive like income taxes. Whether you win $500,000 at the poker table or $1,300 at the slot machine, the tax rate (25%) remains the same. In most cases, the casino deducts 25% of the full amount you won before paying you.
  2. Gambling Commission welcomes publication of Gambling Act Review Call for Evidence The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Spo 08 December 2020.
  3. At the moment, online gambling in the UK is subject to a 15 percent point of consumption tax. There is no word on how large the increase on that rate is expected to be at this time.

British punters will be ‘driven away to the black market’ if certain restrictions proposed by the Gambling Commission are implemented. That is the stark warning from Brigid Simmonds, Chair of the country’s Betting & Gaming Council, the single association that represents betting shops, online gaming businesses and casinos.

As of October 2019, remote betting companies have to pay 21% tax on point of consumption on all games of chance. Again, it is the betting company and not the player that has to pay tax on gambling, but unfortunately, players might still feel the effects of this change.

The Gambling Commission is carrying out a consultation that has raised the possibility that overall monthly online gambling losses might be capped at £100 unless customers could prove they could afford to lose more. The findings are likely to influence the Gambling Act Review, which last week started a 16-week call-for-evidence period.

Talking on Racing TV’s Luck on Sunday show, Simmonds said that requests for certain personal information to prove you have the means to bet is not the right approach.

“This issue of affordability is really important,” she said. “If people are asked to provide tax returns, as somebody suggested, people will start walking away. I mean, I wouldn't share my tax return with anybody. We will be driving people to a black market. PWC [PricewaterhouseCoopers] reported that 200,000 UK gamblers took part in black market activities in 2019. They have made it too tight. The Gambling Commission has asked for more resources to deal with the black market, but that is difficult to do in the internet age.

“We will be doing what they’ve done in Sweden, where the numbers are up to about 40 percent of people [who do or would consider betting on unlicensed products], because they’ve been too tight [on restrictions].”

Simmonds has urged the racing industry to work closely with her members. Otherwise, she warned, racing’s revenues would be impacted.

“We need the horseracing industry to step up and be supportive because that £350 million a year that is currently going into racing via the betting industry is going to reduce if there are more restrictions,” she said.

“We have to make sure we’re not intervening in the wrong way when 30 million people in this country part place in gambling activities on a regular basis without any problem at all.

Gambling tax uk 2019 date

“There is a holistic way of approaching this, which would be better than simply saying, ‘If you don’t produce all of this information, you’re not going to gamble at all.’

Finding a balance

“As an industry, we have to make sure that we are not preying on vulnerable people. During lockdown, we have increased the number of safer gambling messages by 150 percent – and without doubt there is more intervention we can do. But it doesn’t have to be all about ‘You have to produce your bank statements’.

Gambling Tax Uk 2019 2020

Gambling

“There are lots of things individual operators are doing that could be done across the board, but we need to a find a balance between not driving people to the black market but also encouraging people to be responsible and have a better understanding about risk.

“We need the racing industry to support the betting and gaming industry and if they’ve got concerns to please bring them forward. We need to work in partnership to make sure that the product is safe and that safer gambling is at the heart of all our sponsorship agreements as it absolutely should be.”

Gambling tax uk 2019 2020

Simmonds insisted that betting companies had placed safer, responsible gambling at the top of their priority lists, and were doing their best to spread this message.

“I’m sure when we do this review, there will be more restrictions put in place. And we need to do more. We have had to admit we’ve not been best in class in the past,” she admitted. “I took five CEOs from betting companies to House of Lords Gambling Committee, and they were absolutely clear that safer gambling would be at the heart of everything they do, and that comes from boardroom downwards.”

Gambling Tax Uk 2019 Results

She went on to say that it was essential everyone was armed with the facts when contributing to the discussions and call for evidence.

“We’re keen for this to be balanced, proportionate, but above all, evidence-led,” she said. “We need to be very careful not to have misinformation. I was listening to another channel where they said ‘Of course there has been a huge increase in advertising which has led to a huge increase in problem gambling’ but there is no evidence that is the case.

“Problem gambling has been at around 0.5 percent for the last 20 years and, in advertising, the whistle-to-whistle ban [on televised football matches], that we introduced, reduced the exposure to young people on television by about 97 percent.”

October 2017 to September 2018, saw the GGY, OR Gross Gambling Yield, of the UK’s gambling industry hit a staggering £14.5bn. Gambling enterprises are required to pay the UK government a minimum of 15% tax on any amount up to £2,370,500. The tax then increases accordingly to 20%, 30%, 40% and 50%. Thanks to these astonishing numbers, the gambling industry has cemented its place as one of the UK’s largest and most profitable industries.
While there may be many people who disagree with gambling from a moral standpoint, and many who argue that vulnerable individuals are at risk of gambling addiction and therefore tighter controls should be imposed upon the industry as a whole, there is no denying that the UK gambling industry is a mainstay of the UK economy.

The Pieces of the Pie

The UK gambling sector can be divided into a number of different areas, namely; online gambling, betting shops, bingo halls, land-based casinos, arcades and lotteries. Of these, online (or remote) gambling – which includes online betting, online casino games, online bingo and online lotteries – is responsible for the lion’s share of the profits; 39% or £5.6bn GGY. Land-based bookies come in second at 22.1% and the National Lottery follows closely at 20.6%. Traditional casinos rake in 7.4% and old-school bingo halls are responsible for 4.7%. 2017-2018 saw a slight downturn in overall profits compared to the previous years, however; the numbers still indicate that the UK’s love of gambling remains strong and true.

Online Revival

New and improved UK online casinos cater specifically to the UK market. Many casino brands have versions of their casino sites for players outside of the UK, however; if a casino brand has sites that cater to a worldwide audience, their UK players will be redirected to the UK version of the site in order to ensure that the UK economy benefits from their GGY. There are hundreds of excellent new casino sites available to UK players, so many in fact that it can be a mammoth task for users to sift through them and find a site that suits their specific needs.
This is where another branch of the gambling industry comes in to play; the casino review sites. Review sites are run by industry experts that know exactly how things work behind the scenes; in other words, they know a good casino when they see one. These sites cultivate stellar reputations for delivering up-to-date information on everything casino-related and for providing players with meticulously curated lists of the best new UK online casinos on the market. We recommend following their advice whenever possible.

Gambling Tax Uk 2019 Schedule

New Legislation

In response to the question of moral responsibility and the protection of vulnerable individuals, the UK government have imposed strict regulations and guidelines to combat the negative aspects of gambling. One of these measures was to introduce GambleAware, a charity charged with undertaking research on the negative aspects of gambling and thereby providing free prevention and treatment services to those at risk. And more recently, the UK government announced a cap on betting limits for FOTB (fixed odds betting terminals) – reducing the limit from £100 to £2.
Many people equate the decline in overall profits to the fact that punters are no longer able to get carried away on FOTB machines, however; this is viewed as a positive rather than a negative. Another major change for the UK gambling industry was the introduction of the 2014 Gambling Bill. The UK Gambling Commission is now responsible for all UK casino sites and gambling enterprises. The legislation in place ensures that no enterprise can offer gambling options without obtaining a licence from the UKGC.

Taxation

The 2014 Gambling Bill has done much to improve the gambling experience for both players and the general public. One of the biggest changes was the introduction of the 15% tax on all profits generated from betting. This tax actually works in the punters favour because they no longer have to pay tax on any of their winnings. This tax also ensures that the UK economy benefits from the continued growth of the industry and justifies its somewhat dubious nature. There may have been a few grumbles from industry insiders, but the fact is that the public perception of gambling has become more favourable because of the amount of money generated from the taxation.

Gambling Tax Uk 2019 Date

Rules and Regulations

The Gambling Bill has also enabled the UKGC to take the industry in a new direction; out of the seedy shadows and into a new era of transparency and good business practices. Thanks to the UKGC licence and regulations, new online casinos in the UK, in particular, have been forced to improve their services in numerous ways and the results have been beneficial to both the players and the casinos. The remote sector has increased its revenue thanks to new online UK casinos that offer heightened security measures, improved data protection, regularly audited software providers and games, a wider range of trustworthy payment providers and vastly improved customer service. More and more players are now signing up for online casino accounts because they feel safe in the knowledge that the casino will play fair and that they actually have a chance at winning a bob or two.

Employment and Charitable Giving

We’ve made much of the fact that the UK economy benefits from the GGY, but we should also mention that the gambling industry is responsible for employing over 100,000 workers in the UK. An employee often earns an above-average salary and, therefore, gets taxed accordingly. The industry’s workforce also contributes to the economy by spending their hard-earned pennies in other sectors; housing, entertainment, technology and food to name but a few. And to end on a high note, we should also point out that from the 2017-2018 GGY alone, the National Lottery contributed over £1bn to charitable causes.
In conclusion, when it comes to the UK’s gambling habits the pros certainly outweigh the cons. And the UK’s GDP has benefited immensely from an industry that has pulled its socks up and revamped its image to become a stalwart of the economy.