Will the UK government chop online gambling tax proposals?

The Mail on Sunday claimed at the weekend that the British Treasury is working on a multi-million pound sterling tax cut incentive in an effort to motivate online gambling companies based offshore to return to the UK.

The internet and mobile gambling divisions of many of Britain’s top gambling firms relocated to tax-haven regulatory jurisdictions like the Isle of Man, Malta and Gibraltar when the former Labour government imposed a 15 percent tax rate which rendered them uncompetitive with other online gambling enterprises.

More recently, the UK government is in the process of drafting and implementing a secondary licensing and taxation regime aimed at any companies that access UK gamblers, although the 15 percent tax rate and potential problems with the European Commission continue to present difficulties, and Malta has already lodged a complaint .

The Mail on Sunday quotes an unidentified “senior government” source, who told reporters that the Treasury is now considering slashing the gambling tax by as much as a third in a bid to entice companies back to the UK and recoup some of the GBP 2.1 billion in revenues that has been lost over the last seven years.

The newspaper estimates that a five percent cut would save the offshore companies nearly GBP 100 million in tax each year compared with the presently proposed tax rate….and the government source said the argument for lowering gambling taxes from 15 percent to 10 percent was close to being accepted.

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