Online Gambling Community Disappointed

With all the talk as of late from Exchequer Gordon Brown saying that he wanted the UK to embrace the offshore gambling industry by offering them deals and slot machine licenses, his claims to do so have seemingly fallen flat. He spoke last week of Remote Gaming Duties set at 2 or 3%, but it seems that those numbers have come in much higher.

At his budget speech, Brown announced that the Remote Gaming Duty would in fact be 15% which would not encourage that extra income as many had hoped it would. The online gambling community feels that the UK has also now turned their back on the industry.

Many of the online slot machine and gambling companies have relocated from the US after their ban on internet gaming, and have ended up in places like Gibraltar, Cyprus and Malta. Many said that if the UK came through on their promise to offer the lower tax rates that they would willingly pay them, but at 15% there seems very little hope of that now.

Once you add in the VAT and corporation taxes, they would not be able to compete with those companies choosing to stay offshore for the amount paid out would be much higher than what they are paying. The online casinos are saying that they are most likely going to stay exactly where they are, while land based casinos are crying foul as well.

Brown increased their new tax rates to numbers as high as 50% - which makes it very difficult for the slot machine and gambling industry to prosper. The industry says this is a blow for them, and that they don’t understand why the UK spent so much time “deregulating the industry” only to overtax it once they had.

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