In this CalvinAyre.com interview with Rebecca Liggero, Camberton Managing Director Mark Davies shared his opinion about handling gambling taxes in Europe.
A battle is brewing in Europe over gambling taxes. Currently, tax offered for the online gambling industry is different from the tax offered for the land-based industry.
For Camberton Managing Director Mark Davies, the best way to handle the situation is to “equalize” the taxes.
“The mistake the governments make is they put the tax too high, and if making it equal with offline means putting it too high, then they should make it lower,” Davies told CalvinAyre.com.
He said imposing higher taxes for both online and land-based gambling businesses will only result in heartbreak—not just for the operators, but also for the government.
“If they want to equalize it, equalize it to a lower rate because they think it’s fair to have online and offline [taxes] the same, then it’s great. But the mistake that they would make would be to say it’s got to be equal, therefore it’s got to be high. In the process, they’re going to lose half their market,” Davies explained.
Meanwhile, there is a bit of news for operators in the Netherlands as the government prepares an online gambling regulation possibly in 2017. Davies said regulators still have “plenty of time” to make the transition as seamless as possible.
“I think they should be able to get it right… because they’ve got a lot of other models they can follow. There are a lot of people out there who were regulated before them. They should be able to do it pretty simply,” Davies said.
His word of advice: no to high taxes.
“Don’t set your tax rate too high and just make sure that you’re regulating the reality of the product, not the rhetoric of the product,” Davies said.
