Italy to ditch turnover levy in major tax overhaul
New law, expected to be passed within weeks, will see end of turnover levy and all verticals taxed at a maximum of 20% GGR
Italy’s online tax regime looks set to be overhauled within weeks in a boost for bingo and sportsbook operators after the country’s government unveiled a proposal to tax all online games at the same rate of gross gaming revenues (GGR).
The draft primary law, which is expected to be passed by mid-March, will empower regulator AAMS to introduce a blanket 20% GGR tax across all verticals, with a provision for this to be lowered at a later stage should the market be deemed to be underperforming.
The switch would mean the likes of bingo, sports betting and poker tournament games would all be moved to the revenue-based tax currently enjoyed by casino, cash poker and exchange betting, rather than their current turnover-based regimes.
And the regulator will be able to begin implementation of the new regime as soon as the law has been passed with no time constraints or deadlines contained within the decree.
“The plan is to have a single tax across all online games which will be quite important for poker, sports betting and bingo, which have been over taxed over the past,” Giulio Coraggio, head of the Italian gambling practice at DLA Piper, told eGaming Review.
“The tax must be set within certain perimeters and the maximum 20% rate is the plan at the moment, which is essential to make the dot.it offering competitive against non-Italian licensed platforms. This change is also likely to attract new operators and suppliers in the Italian online gaming market,” he added.
The primary laws comes after the Italian parliament last year introduced a delegation law, which gave government 12 months in which to adopt changes to the gambling sector, with a raft of new land-based measures also to be introduced.
The new law was set to be approved by government on Friday, however, this has now been delayed and is expected to be rescheduled within the next four weeks.
According to figures seen by eGR, Italy’s online gambling market grew marginally last year with GGR up from 726m in 2013 to 729m in 2014.