Russia confirms gambling tax hike

The Eurasian country is planning to double gaming taxes starting January 1, 2018.

Russia.- The Ministry of Finance revealed on its website the guidelines for its budget and taxes for 2018-2020 and it disclosed that gaming taxes are set to double starting January 1, 2018. Further increases are expected until 2020.

The Ministry said that gaming tax rates, which haven’t increased in 13 years, will increase 10 times by 2020 in order to increase revenue from official budgets. Land-based operators currently don’t pay any taxes on gaming revenue but they do pay flat fees for gaming tables or electronic gambling machines, whilst bookmakers pay a similar flat fee for each retail they have. The new regulations will be applied to both land-based and online gambling operators.

Earlier this year it was revealed that the Russian government was looking for new ways to increase national gaming tax fees for all legal sectors of the industry. Moreover, under a law signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, bookmakers were subject to a new legislation in March that compels those that take bets on sports event to agree with “professional sports entities” on the use of logos and names of events, namely, all-Russian sports federations, professional sports leagues, organising events like that, and on the basis of agreements to deduct certain sums from the proceeds. It’s been estimated that at least US$264k overall are deducted per quarter.