Betting and Gaming Council CEO Grainne Hurst says potential gambling tax rises in the UK are based on “fantasy economics” and are “simply not credible.”
Reports in UK newspaper The Guardian said the Labour government was considering suggestions from two thinktanks over potentially increasing tax duties for operators in the country.
Labour is reportedly looking at a proposal from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which has suggested hiking remote gaming duty to 50 per cent, up from 21 per cent.
The IPPR has also suggested doubling the 15 per cent general betting duty.
Meanwhile, the Social Market Foundation says increasing remote gaming duty from 21 per cent to 42 per cent could be one way to improve the gambling industry’s tax contribution.
But Hurst said any further tax rises “will not only slam the breaks on growth for our sector, but it will threaten jobs and completely derail horseracing.”
“After so many years of uncertainty, we need stability to deliver sustainable investment, not further change which threatens to undo that contribution,” she said. “What is true for the BGC is also true for horseracing.”
Hurst said customers have been “hit hard” by economic pressures in the UK recently and that now is “not the time to ramp up that pressure.”
“We want to partner with Government to see the right, proportionate regulations and a stable tax regime, which doesn’t hit customers, doesn’t raise the attraction of illegal operators and doesn’t derail the horseracing industry, but instead delivers on the government’s growth agenda.”
