The tax situation for bingo operators in the UK has long been deemed flawed. While this relatively harmless entertainment pursuit is dubbed ‘soft gambling’, it pays more in tax as an industry than the ‘hard’ gambling operators pay. Casinos, the sports betting industry and adult gaming centres pay an across-the-board 15% tax and the bingo industry pays 20% altogether. There have been precedents set in EU courts regarding the ‘fairness’ of this practice, but only with regard to claiming certain types of VAT back, while the online UK gambling industry gets away with blue murder in not paying tax.
Regardless of how prestigious it is to have a license under the UK Gambling Commission, it just doesn’t pay for online gambling operators. Even big brand names such as William Hill, Betfred, Betfair, Ladbrokes and so on, have their online gambling operations licensed offshore. The reason being – this changes the tax they pay from as much as 20% in the case of bingo and 15% in the case of gambling – to a meagre approximation of tax of about 1%.
The UK government is a also tired of the fact that the William Hills of this world, take tax pounds away into offshore jurisdictions such as Alderney, Gibraltar, Malta, and so on, which also still leaves them the right to advertise to a UK facing audience. They want things to change and quite honestly we don’t blame them.
The UK online bingo/gambling audience is one of the most prolific and sophisticated of its kind world-wide, and if an operator wants to punt their business to this audience, then they should pay. The UK is in desperate need of more tax funds as is being seen in social welfare and NHS reforms, why not some from a gambling industry that is not paying their way. Perhaps they can even knock a few % off the land bingo industry’s tax bill this way. I mean, let’s rather have 300 operators paying 7.5% than 10 operators paying 15% – do the maths?
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