Ireland Proposes New Tax for Online Gambling Sites
Just recently, Ireland’s Minister of Finance, Brian Lenihan, released a budget that confirms what many online casino slot lovers have feared this year: the Irish government is planning to tax online and telephone casino and sports betting. In other words, the government is working towards placing a tax on all bookmakers, including casinos and sportsbooks, who take bets from Irish citizens, regardless of the location of the website. This proposal also includes modernizing horse racing schedules and bookmakers’ opening hours, and regulating and licensing online casinos.
At the present time Ireland levies a 1% betting duty on all transactions between Irish citizens and Irish online betting sites located within the borders of the Emerald Isle. Nevertheless, all casino and sports betting wagers placed online or via telephone with sites outside the country are not affected by that tax. In order to fix this situation and increase the country’s revenue, Lenihan wants to apply the tax to those casinos overseas if they conduct financial transactions with Irish citizens.
This week, Minister Lenihan proposed the Annexes to the Summary of 2011 Budget Members. This new proposal states that “the Irish government intends to include provisions in the finance bill and revise the Betting Act 1931 to ensure that all bookmakers taking bets from Ireland will pay 1% duty on those bets in the same way that betting shops currently do.” However, collecting this tax from foreign-owned and foreign-operated betting companies will not be an easy task and Ireland would have to go as far as creating a licensing framework and refuse to allow unlicensed bookmakers to do business with the Irish. Even before awarding licenses to overseas casinos and sportsbooks, the Irish government has to ban all of the existing foreign sites, which would violate the EU’s free trade rules. However, Minister Lenihan will try to work things out and bring in additional revenue for Ireland.


