US government seeks regulation
Finance Minister Colm Imbert confirmed the government’s intentions of regulating gaming industry.
US.- During a national debate on tax regulation, the US Finance Minister Colm Imbert has warned the opposition about the potential legislation for the national gambling industry. Imbert stated that if legislators do not come to an agreement to regulate the gaming industry, “the interim tax measures could become permanent.”
“If you want to make it a permanent measure, it will be if you don’t support the effort to regulate the gambling industry, get rid of money laundering, criminals and leakage of foreign exchange…” Imbert said last Friday during the debate on the Provisional Collection of Taxes Order.
The government’s proposal is to approve the Gaming and Betting Control Bill 2017, which will go before a Joint Select Committee again soon. The measure would protect “minors and vulnerable people from being harmed from gambling, to prevent gambling from being a source of crime, to ensure consumer protection and provide for collection of taxes among other objectives.”
He concluded: ”We always listen. The people in the industry made representation and showed that video game consoles were captured in the taxation. We decided we did not want a situation where a child’s toy would be subjected to taxes so we took that out. We listen to sense. We listen to intelligence, but we don’t listen to nonsense.”
