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added on 2010-07-28 07:06:23
The European countries understood the potential of online gambling and used this market in order to fund their budgets and to avoid tax increases.
The United Kingdom, for example, established rules regarding advertising and licensing online casinos, and created a tax system instead of wasting money on trying to impose a ban on online gaming. In 2005, the UK became the first major country to decide regulating the gaming market.
European countries, such as France, Denmark and Italy followed the UK's example and started collecting millions in taxes. It is more than likely that Greece, Germany, Switzerland and Spain will embrace the same measures very soon.
“What’s happened is a realization that you can’t un-invent the Internet. People are gaming online. You either try to regulate and tax it, or people are going to go to the offshore operators, where you don’t get any revenue”, said David Trunkfield, a consultant from PricewaterhouseCoopers.com.
“The gambling business is one of Europe’s real success stories online. This is a business in which Europe leads the world”, said Betfair's Tim Phillips.
According to H2 Gambling Capital, a consulting firm, the European gambling websites generated almost $12.5 billion of the industry's $29.3 billion total revenue this year. Imagine the amount that countries could raise each year, if gambling activities were taxed!
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