United Kingdom Trying
Another Tactic
January
22, 2010
When the United States made
online gambling illegal, many online casino operators took their
companies and moved them to countries that were still online gambling
friendly. Many of them went to places like Antigua, etc. but many also
went to the United Kingdom. There they welcomed them with open arms and
told them that they were more than welcome to set up shop there for a
small fee.
That small fee ended up being extremely high amounts of tax, and the
online gambling operators said that they would not pay it. They argued
that it was ridiculous the amount of money that they were charging them
to be there, and if they didn’t drop it they would leave. Well, the UK
decided to take a hard stance and the online gambling operators started
leaving. They were still offering their services to the people of the
UK, but they were not going to reside within the country.
So now the UK has all these off shore online gambling sites offering the
same services to their residents, but no money to show for it. So they
decided to go another way. Now they are saying that you can offer your
online gambling services in our country, but only if you pay a licensing
fee to the government. Only those companies that pay the license fee
would be able to offer online gambling to their clients – and those that
didn’t pay it would be banned.
Most of the online gambling companies are upset to say the least and
they argue that the tax is punitive. Stocks in most of the online
gambling companies dropped immediately with the announcement, for this
is a big deal in the online gambling industry. The UK is by far the
latest online gambling market in all of Europe, so for them to take this
stance it sets a dangerous precedent for other countries.
