Rank calls for flat rate 15% UK gaming tax
The Rank Group has published a proposal for the creation of a single tax rate for all UK betting and gaming which it says would raise more tax revenue for the state while also levelling the playing field between UK domiciled companies and offshore operators...
THE Rank Group has published a proposal for the creation of a single tax rate for all UK betting and gaming.
Its ‘Responsible Taxation – Fairness, Simplicity, Sustainability’ report sets out the benefits of replacing the seven different tax rates with a single one of 15%.
These include levelling the playing field between UK domiciled companies and offshore operators; increasing the country’s tax income and creating onshore jobs; lowering the administrative costs of tax compliance and collection for operators and the treasury alike.
A tax rate levelling would also support social policy, the report concluded, by achieving “alignment with the Gambling Act by ending the current discrimination against those forms of betting and gaming with the highest levels of customer protection”.
Rank chief executive Ian Burke said: “At the moment the gaming and betting activities of UK consumers are subject to a patchwork quilt of taxation, without any apparent logic or relationship to social policy.
“It is particularly concerning that the current system of taxation seems to be undermining the aims of the Gambling Act by imposing the highest rates of duty on those venues which provide the greatest degree of supervision and have the lowest rates of underage gambling.”
Under the proposals, a 15% rate of duty would apply to each of the activities currently governed by the Gambling Act, including sports betting, bingo, casino games, card room games, amusement machines and football pools, regardless of whether the activity takes place in a land-based venue or online, onshore or offshore.
As reported on EGRmagazine.com, Rank expects to collect £25.9m in overpaid Value-Added Tax (VAT) from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs during the first quarter of this year following a December decision by the VAT and Duties Tribunal that the UK government’s treatment of certain types of amusement machines in Rank’s land-based casinos and bingo clubs between 2002 and 2005 contravened the European Union’s principles of fiscal neutrality.
Rank has also submitted a claim for £16m VAT overpaid on main stage bingo in its land-based clubs from 2004 following the UK government’s announcement in December it will no longer charge VAT on bingo games after a judgment in the Rank Group High Court case in June 2009 brought by Deloitte.
In other company news today, Rank released its 2009 year-end results.