The gambling bill in the United Kingdom has got lots of changes and one of them is about introducing a tax on industry «free plays» and customer bonus incentives. For now though, this change in the gambling bill will be frozen for a while, due to the 8th June’s General Election, as Parliament shuts down. We should remind that a few months ago, HMRC introduced new provisions accounting for duties on customer free plays issued by operators which would be attached to the 2017 Finance Bill. Government chose to remove the tax amendments from the bill and detailing this decision the government stated it did not believe that industry plans would receive sufficient scrutiny prior to parliament being dissolved on May 3 ahead of the General Election.
Without any doubts, this is a spot that needs a lot more consideration, since there will be lots of reactions from the players and the betting operators, but everything will be clearer after the end of the elections on the 8th of June. Should the Conservative Party be re-elected, the provisions could reappear within the government’s ‘revised finance act’.