The UK’s Autumn budget for 2018 is under discussion, led by UK Chancellor Philip Hammond for the House of Commons. Odd as it is to find a topic like this in a site about gambling. But it does involve online gambling taxes. Specifically, it mentions how an increase in taxes on online gambling can help offset reducing maximum wagers on FOBT’s. These are fixed-odds betting terminals, which is from £100 to £2.
The cut in the FOBT results in a reduction of revenues in taxes the government will collect. So they have been looking into increasing the Remote Gaming Duty, or RGD. The RGD is the tax on revenues from online casinos. This rate is separate still from taxes on online sports betting. The RGD will increase starting October 1, 2019. The current RGD is at 15% and will be increasing to 21%.
Online Gambling Tax Schedule
The scheduling of the implementation of the RGD increase was supposed to start in April 2019. Then it changed to April 2020. Now its at October 2019. The FOBT stake cut also has no date pending in terms of implementation, but it could start at around the same time that the RGD will increase.
This comes as a relief to operators, since the initial rumor about the RGD was an increase of up to 25%. Of which caused a drop in the shares of gambling companies based in the UK. Its often recommended to go for international companies. You can find some from bookie pay per head reviews.
For some operators, they are a bit relieved that the rates were not as high as the rumors say. But some are complaining of a lot of increases in taxes over the past four years. These are taxes on online point of consumption tax, tax on free bets, machine games duty, and so on. A 20% increase in the RGD will cost the gambling industry as much as £200 million annually. The new RGD is forecast at £1.22 billion for a 5-year period, the stake cut on the FOBT, meanwhile, is at £1.15 billion in 5 years.
