Denmark to amend licence fee and tax structure

Denmark has laid out plans to amend its licensing costs and taxation periods by the end of the year, eGaming Review has learned.

The country’s political parties came to an agreement over a number of amendments to legislation and a new draft law containing the changes is expected to be published later this month.

If the bill is passed in the spring, it should come into force in either July 2015 or January 2016.

Although exact figures have yet to be decided, licence fees will be amended to more accurately reflect an operator’s size with two additional fee brackets to be created.

“Adjustment must ensure that it is more proportional to the games operators’ gaming revenue,” the regulator said.

“[The change] introduces two new steps in the fee scale at the high end as it had been anticipated that there would be gambling operators who had gaming revenues of DK100m,” it added.

Meanwhile, operators will only have to declare their respective tax returns on a monthly basis, rather than the current weekly format, which the regulator said should “ease the administrative burden” on licensed operators in the country.

Under the new taxation model, declarations of tax are to be paid by the 15^th of each month following the expiration of the previous tax period, and operators will no longer publish their figures but send them to the Danish Gambling Authority.

Late last year the tiered tax rate for online and land-based gaming operators came under scrutiny from the European Union, but the body’s General Court ruled in favour of the Danish government and deemed the tax rate to be legal.