Now the UK tries for a better online gambling tax

We have regularly written in this general gambling news feature about the efforts of the Irish government to make greater gains from online gambling activity but now it would appear that the British government is having similar thoughts but facing similar problems. We all know that gambling providers have generally moved their online gambling operations to overseas locations such as Gibraltar, Malta and the Isle of Man where there are more favourable tax regimes but now gambling news has learned that the British government wants to introduce a gambling tax which is applicable at the point of consumption meaning that they want a piece of the gambling action from British punters regardless of which company they gamble with. As reported previously in the general gambling news in Ireland there are a number of difficulties in collecting such a tax but a new problem has been thrown into the pot and that is that the gambling public may be driven to unauthorised or unregulated sites which cannot be good for the industry or the gambling public. It is estimated in some quarters of the gambling news that approaching 20% of all gambling revenues are generated by online gambling and all of this is avoiding the current 15% UK tax by being located in overseas territories; under proposals general gambling news has heard about each operator of an online gambling site would be required to obtain a UK license issued by the gambling commission but even that will not be sufficient to guarantee that income from UK gamblers will be declared. The Irish situation has been in the general gambling news for a long time and is no nearer a solution so it will be interesting to see whether the UK government can find a good solution that possibly the Irish government can follow but somehow we think this is a long road but we shall keep reporting developments in this gambling news section of our site.